Visceral Politics of Food: the Bio-Moral Economy of Work- Lunch in Mumbai, India
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Visceral politics of food: the bio-moral economy of work- lunch in Mumbai, India Ken Kuroda London School of Economics and Political Science A thesis submitted to the Department of Anthropology of the London School of Economics for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, London, March 2018 1 Declaration I certify that the thesis I have presented for examination for the MPhil/PhD degree of the London School of Economics and Political Science is solely my own work other than where I have clearly indicated that it is the work of others (in which case the extent of any work carried out jointly by me and any other person is clearly identified in it). The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. This thesis may not be reproduced without my prior written consent. I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of any third party. I declare that my thesis consists of 98896 words. 2 Abstract This Ph.D. examines how commuters in Mumbai, India, negotiate their sense of being and wellbeing through their engagements with food in the city. It focuses on the widespread practice of eating homemade lunches in the workplace, important for commuters to replenish mind and body with foods that embody their specific family backgrounds, in a society where religious, caste, class, and community markers comprise complex dietary regimes. Eating such charged substances in the office canteen was essential in reproducing selfhood and social distinction within Mumbai’s cosmopolitan environment. These engagements were “visceral” since they were experienced in and expressed through the intimate scale of the gut, mediating and consolidating boundaries between self and Other on lines of (incommensurable) food habits. Such tensions, most visible between vegetarians and meat eaters, were aggravated in the wake of the “beef ban” in March 2015, which illegalized the slaughter of cattle in the state of Maharashtra, wherein cosmopolitan pleasure gave way to visceral disgust and estrangement. In connection, this thesis examines the vast work-lunch economy of Mumbai through three prominent businesses: the Dabbawalas, a 125-year-old home food delivery network; tiffin services, informal catering businesses operated by housewives, who commercially hybridize homemade food; and tech food start-ups, run by a generation of young entrepreneurs striving for novel takes on homemade food. Whereas anthropological literature on India has analysed either the emergence of a new urban public sphere since India’s economic liberalization, or the ripples it has made in the domestic sphere, this thesis examines how these businesses address commuter specific bio-moral anxieties of maintaining communal identity, purity, and wellbeing within the stressful environment of contemporary Mumbai, by means of mediating domestic intimacy with the urban public, at an affordable price. These interventions are conceptualized as “technologies of purity”, specific forms of visceral politics of food. 3 Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................ 3 Table of Contents ......................................................................................................... 4 List of Photographs and Figures ................................................................................ 6 Note on Style ................................................................................................................. 7 Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... 8 Chapter I. “Visceral politics” and “Technologies of purity”: Theories and Histories of the “bio-moral” in India ....................................................................... 10 1. Technologies of Purity - interventions into the bio-morally porous ................................ 12 2. The porous boundaries of ghar (home) and bahar (outside) in India .............................. 18 3. Visceral Politics - socializing through the gut ................................................................. 27 4. Histories and ethnographies of gustatory mobilizations in India ..................................... 33 5. Thesis Outline .................................................................................................................. 40 Chapter II. Research Methodology .......................................................................... 44 1. Cosmopolitanism, commensality, and method ................................................................ 44 2. Fieldsites .......................................................................................................................... 51 Chapter III. The “beef ban” and “meat ban”: the visceral politics of boundary making in Mumbai .................................................................................................... 59 1. Situating the “beef ban” ................................................................................................... 59 2.1. Article 48 - the ethic of cow protection, law for a bovine nation ................................. 64 2.2. The Constituent Assembly Debates - Religion or Economics? .................................... 65 2.3. Supreme and High court rulings - the Nation vs. minority rights ................................. 69 2.4. The abomination and productivity of slaughter ............................................................ 75 3.1. The “visceral politics” of the law in Mumbai - from pleasure to disgust ..................... 78 3.2. The story of Viral .......................................................................................................... 78 3.3. Meat, transgression, and incommensurable subjects .................................................... 82 4. The “Mumbai meat ban”, or the visceral politics of purifying the city ........................... 98 Chapter IV: The visceral politics of ghar-ka-khana (homemade food) in urban Mumbai ..................................................................................................................... 107 1. Ghar-ka-khana (home food) and bahar-ka-khana (outside food) in contemporary Mumbai .............................................................................................................................. 108 2. Dadi’s dal (grandmothers’ lentils) - deciphering the “Indian meal” ............................. 113 3. Post-liberalization era experiments and anxieties between ghar and bahar .................. 121 4.1. Marketing the home - tech savvy food start-ups and luxury home chefs in the age of post-liberalization .............................................................................................................. 129 4.2. The case of SpiceDabba .............................................................................................. 131 4.3. Home chefs: transferring charisma to everyday home cooking .................................. 133 Chapter V. The bio-moral history of the Indian tiffin (lunchbox) and the Mumbai Dabbawalas (lunchbox delivery men): from late 19th century Bombay to millennial Mumbai .................................................................................................. 138 1. Technologies of purity on three scales ........................................................................... 138 2. The history of the Indian tiffin ....................................................................................... 140 3. “Ever-silver”: the bio-morality of stainless steel tiffin .................................................. 144 4. Khanawalis, Dabbawalas, and Cotton Mills - bio-moral networks of the Bombay working classes from the late 19th century ......................................................................... 148 4 5. From mills to malls, or Bombay to Mumbai: situating the Dabbawala work and network in millennial Mumbai ......................................................................................................... 152 Chapter VI: The Dabbawala ethics, work, and network in contemporary Mumbai: technologies of purity within the city .................................................... 156 1. The journey of the tiffin ................................................................................................. 156 2. The ergonomics and ethics of the Mumbai Dabbawalas ............................................... 166 3. The white-topi-kurta as cultural capital and technology of purity ................................. 178 4. The Dabbawala organization on the global circuit: Management science, media, and tourism ............................................................................................................................... 185 5. Brand ambassadors of cleanliness, efficiency, and purity ............................................. 188 Chapter VII: Visceral politics of commensality in the office canteen: the ethics of cosmopolitanism, distinction, and disgust ............................................................. 192 1. The semi-public of the office canteen - mingling with ones known Others .................. 192 2. Performing (public) intimacy: cosmopolitan ethics in the office canteen at GLC ........ 195 3. “Welcome to the meat eating table!” - “Non-veg” days, visceral distinction, and estrangement at M&P .......................................................................................................