“Food as a Metaphor for Cultural Hierarchies” – a talk by Dr Gopal Guru -- Food is not only what one eats, it has a complex cultural setting in which what is eaten, how and at what times of the day, where and with whom define, not only a persons culinary habits but as Pierre Bourdieu says is, “the basis of the social relationship between different groups and social classes.”

It is important first to differentiate between cooked and uncooked food or ‘kaccha’ and ‘pakka’ food. This suggests the distinction of inequality emerging from deprivation, humiliation and human rights within the cultural hierarchies of the subcontinent. In this sense it is cooked food that provides the defining space for example of the term ‘taste’.

The practice of cooking itself produces different kinds of distinctions, horizontal and vertical within the context of the changing food practices of different caste groups. What are the conditions that sustain these hierarchies? This lecture discusses the relationship between music and food eating rituals on the one hand and the politics of food culture that exist across different social situations. From the point of view of cultural hierarchies it is necessary to explore “the meaning of differences… by looking at their contexts, social and cultural” which leads us to a discussion about the politics of resistance as vitalized through different notions of the recipe.

Finally, we must ask an important moral question, why is it that certain sections of our people who can afford cooked food are unable to enjoy it?

Dr. Gopal Guru is a Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research and teaching interests are Cultural Politics, issues of Social Justice, self-respect and dignity. His publications cover dalit and feminist questions, social and political thought in modern India and moral and social theory. He has been a visiting fellow at Calcutta and Mysore Universities, Sanso PO University Paris, IDS Sussex, UK and Pennsylvania University, USA. His recent Publication is, Humiliation: Claims and Context (ed) OUP, 2009.

Timings: 6.30 pm onwards..

At

India International Centre, Annexe Lecture Room, Delhi.

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