Although South Asian cookery and gastronomy has transformed contemporary urban foodscape all over the world, social scientists have paid scant attention to this phenomenon. Curried Cultures–a wide-ranging collection of essays–explores the relationship between globalization and South Asia through food, covering the cuisine of the colonial period to the contemporary era, investigating its material and symbolic meanings. Curried Cultures challenges disciplinary boundaries in considering South Asian gastronomy by assuming a proximity to dishes and diets that is often missing when food is a lens to investigate other topics. The book’s established scholarly contributors examine food to comment on a range of cultural activities as they argue that the practice of cooking and eating matter as an important way of knowing the world and acting on it.
Tulasi Srinivas is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies and the Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies at Emerson College and author of Winged Faith: Rethinking Religion and Globalization through the Sathya Sai Movement (Columbia, 2009). Krishnendu Ray is Assistant Professor of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University and author of The Migrant's Table: Meals and Memories in Bengali-American Households (Temple University, 2004).
328 pp.6 x 9Illus: 5 b/w photographs, 4 line illustrations
9780520270114$75.00|£63.00Hardcover
May 2012