Sacred Cows and Chicken Manchurian

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James Staples. Sacred Cows and Chicken Manchurian

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Introduction

A DEVELOPING INTEREST IN BEEF AND COW POLITICS

COW POLITICS IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA

PLACES AND PEOPLE

METHODS AND ETHICS

THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF FOOD AND EATING IN INDIA

MATERIAL SYMBOLS

TWO RECURRING ISSUES

Vegetarian Dilemmas

Of Cows and Buffaloes

CHAPTER ONE. Differential Histories of Meat Eating in India

REIMAGINING THE PAST IN THE PRESENT

VEDIC REFERENCES TO CASTE AND FOOD

CATTLE IN COLONIAL TIMES

BOVINE POLITICS IN POSTINDEPENDENCE INDIA

CONCLUSION: COMPLEX HISTORIES

CHAPTER TWO. Everyday South Indian Foodways

EVERYDAY DINING IN COASTAL ANDHRA

Morning: Tea, Milk, Breakfast, and Snacks

Afternoon: Lunch and Snacks

Evening: Dinner

Meat Eating

Alcohol

FOOD IN THE CITY

DECIPHERING ANDHRA CUISINE

CONCLUSION: MATERIAL SYMBOLS

CHAPTER THREE. From Cattle Shed to Dinner Plate

TAKING ON SACRED COWS

THE BEEF CHAIN

From Cattle Purchase to Slaughter

Beef Sellers

Beef Buyers

OF KNOWING AND NOT KNOWING

CONCLUSION: CIRCUMVENTION AND COMPLICITY

CHAPTER FOUR. Cattle Slaughter, Beef Eating, and Ambivalence

CHARTING CHANGING ATTITUDES

Other Kinds of Meat

Beef Distinctions

Surreptitious Meat Consumption

AMBIVALENT ATTITUDES TOWARD COWS AND BEEF

CONCLUSION

CHAPTER FIVE. Health, the Environment, and the Rise of the Chicken

RECENT CHANGES IN MEAT-EATING PRACTICES

DECLINE OF THE GOAT

RISE OF THE CHICKEN

Local Change and Chicken

Chicken after the Green Revolution

Promoting the Broiler

Global Chickens: The US Influence

Sanitizing the Chicken

MEAT AND HEALTH

MEAT AND THE ENVIRONMENT

CONCLUSION: CHANGING MEAT-EATING PRACTICES

CHAPTER SIX. From Caste to Class in Food

CLASS IN SOUTH INDIA

FEEDING GUESTS IN ANANDAPURAM

Lunch at Babu’s

Dinner at Sarojini’s

Remembering Past Repasts

Interpreting Anandapuram Dining

MEAT, CLASS, AND CASTE

Kotaiah: High-Caste Meat Eating and Urban Success

Prakash: Lower-Caste Beef Avoidance

Chic Meat versus Dalit Consumption

CONCLUSION: SOCIAL DIFFERENTIATION THROUGH FOOD

Conclusion

BOVINE ASSUMPTIONS

CONTESTED HISTORIES

SUSTAINING “SACRED COW” NARRATIVES IN THE PRESENT

Globalization and Economic Liberalization

Resisting “the Other”

Liberal Silences and Converging Forces

MEAT CONSUMPTION IN CONTEXT

THE CASE FOR ETHNOGRAPHY

High-Caste Complicity in the Beef Business

Complexities of Human-Cattle Relations

Distinctions between Vegetarianism and Nonvegetarianism

Beyond Nationalism

Meat and Class Distinction

BUSTING DICHOTOMIES

The Material and the Symbolic

The Trouble with “Culture”

Complicating Binaries

LAST WORDS

GLOSSARY. ABBREVIATIONS

NOTES. INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE: DIFFERENTIAL HISTORIES OF MEAT EATING IN INDIA

CHAPTER TWO: EVERYDAY SOUTH INDIAN FOODWAYS

CHAPTER THREE: FROM CATTLE SHED TO DINNER PLATE

CHAPTER FOUR: CATTLE SLAUGHTER, BEEF EATING, AND AMBIVALENCE

CHAPTER FIVE: HEALTH, THE ENVIRONMENT, AND THE RISE OF THE CHICKEN

CHAPTER SIX: FROM CASTE TO CLASS IN FOOD

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

INDEX

Отрывок из книги

CULTURE, PLACE, AND NATURE

Studies in Anthropology and Environment

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With the help of Das, my research assistant, in 2016 and 2017 we also met butchers, brokers, and others for whom beef was an integral part of their everyday lives (even when, as was sometimes the case for the brokers, they did not eat it themselves). Through our beef-seller contacts, we also attended cattle markets, long bus rides away, in order to trace the journeys cattle took from the cowshed to the serving dish, and to tease out how what the animals meant or represented changed along the way. In the same way that other commodities are transformed by, or transformative of, the contexts through which they pass, so too are cattle and the other parties involved changed along the way.16

Taken together, these diverse settings, emerging as they did out of serendipity as much as preplanning, offered windows onto a unique range of everyday perspectives on cattle, on beef, and on food and eating more generally. Although some of those we worked with, such as the meat sellers, had a vested interest in keeping up to date with stories of vigilante attacks and government action on cattle slaughter, for the most part my interlocutors would not describe themselves as activists. We did not seek to work with those directly engaged in perpetrating violence against those who traded in beef, nor did we spend time with those who organized beef festivals or other events aimed at defending the gastronomic rights of those who wished to eat meat derived from cattle. There is, to be sure, important ethnographic work to be done with these groups, and there are interesting questions to be asked about their respective roles in contemporary democracy and the Indian state. The perspectives of both, however, have been well reported upon (and sometimes, perhaps, caricatured) in the press and in social media, occasionally represented more directly through blogs and YouTube videos. Although I have read and watched a great deal of this material, my interest has been to give greater weight to the voices of those not only less heard but also more widespread, and to interpret what they said in the richly layered contexts in which they were embedded. These were the voices of those who chose to eat or not eat beef but who, most of the time, took more ambivalent, more nuanced positions on the issues than those on either side of the debate as it was represented in everyday discourse. I regard those voices not as fixed but as shifting in tune with the world around them. Such people are not easily pigeonholed, either by caste or by community or even within the new classifications that have arisen out of more recent work that interrogates class.17

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