I teach, read and write about food and society
Joined July 2014
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25 Aug 2021
1. Spices and Meat
Surprisingly, flawed opinions persist about the use of spices in Early Modern Europe. Apparently it was to cover the smell of rotting flesh or to compensate for poor quality meat.
I read two instances recently.
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17 Dec 2024
What a picture in the NYT today
“All the jazz musicians” as Art Kane, who took the picture on Aug 12, 1958 on East 126th Street in Harlem, put it
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4 Dec 2024
We know globally, good school food depends on good jobs and access to cooked food (not processed, packaged, food)
Here is an example of how that is being undermined in India — by underpaying women cooks
Written by my sister in law Rema Nagarajan
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/…
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2 Nov 2024
This is one of the more interesting books I have read about a post-colonial, transnational, gastroecology in terms of its empirical richness and theoretical provocation.
That critical juxtaposition of gastronomy and ecology gets us around the cliches of mere ethnocentric gourmandism.
It is a model of how to think through the complex history and experience of the world, that we consume (and destroy) to sustain ourselves.
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22 Oct 2024
Wow!! Looking forward to reading every issue. Each edition of On Eating is peppered with complex sociocultural, political, gender and economic realities that heat up kitchens
indianexpress.com/article/ci…
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22 Oct 2024
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5 Oct 2024
The film “Food and Country” is Ruth Reichl’s best work!
Drove me through tears, anger and hope
Interviewed by Food Studies PhD alum Mitchell Davis at the Ceres Food Film Festival; introduced by Jennifer Berg and Mayaan Laufer of Palms for Life Fund ceresfilmfestival.org/
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23 Sep 2024
Organizing App workers in NYC
This is a terrific example of solid organizing work that could be replicated elsewhere
slucuny.swoogo.com/24Septemb…
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18 Sep 2024
Here is the special issue of The Anthropology of Consciousness on touch in a digitized world
Most are open access, mine isn’t. Message me for my piece if you do not have institutional access
anthrosource.onlinelibrary.w…
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14 Sep 2024
Brilliant and subtle. Must read Himal more often. “Afghan refugees’ stories of food. Afghans living in Delhi preserve and construct ideas of home – both the remembered home lost to war in Afghanistan, and the home of refuge they are building in India.” himalmag.com/culture/afghan-…?
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11 Sep 2024
“Street Vendors of New York by the Numbers: Presenting the First Comprehensive Survey of NYC’s Iconic Street Vendors” - results of the first comprehensive survey. Thurs, Sept. 19th, 6-7:30 PM. NEO Philanthropy, 1001, 6th Ave 12th floor, New York, NY 10018
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9 Sep 2024
Farah’s writing is always so thoughtful; full of remorse and regret, critical of easy consumerism “Why would two people want to sit at a dining table, with its solid, vast distance between them? Instead, we acquired a 5x3 metre length of…”
vittlesmagazine.com/p/folds-…?
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27 Aug 2024
My take on a new translation of a book on Dalit cooking from Marathwada, India
It will be in three parts. This is the first one.
Thanks to Prof. Vandana Swamy and Prof. Ishita Dey in helping me navigate the related literature
foodanthro.com/2024/08/26/re…
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26 Aug 2024
Touch, talk and taste. They made me think and work hard with my hands. Open access. “Hands called our attention because of their salience during the pandemic, which accelerated modes of digitization resulting in the deepening of a crisis of social touch.”
anthrosource.onlinelibrary.w…
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25 Aug 2024
NYC public school edible schoolyard breakfast
The figs, greens, tomatoes, peppers and herbs = grown and harvested by the kids and their teachers
P.S. 216 Gravesend (figs), P.S. 7 East Harlem (peppers and tomatoes) and herbs from the Brooklyn Gardens Elementary School
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8 Aug 2024
This summer, Scott Alves Barton (PhD ‘16, Food Studies, NYU) is a part of the African American Garden at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG). It explores Black culture through the lens of plants. This three-year project This three-year project is… steinhardt.nyu.edu/news/cele…
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6 Aug 2024
Shahu Patole’s Dalit (mostly Mahar and Mang) cooking from Marathwada has set me thinking. There are at least 22,000 cuisines in India — that is the # of dialects reported in the census — which is linked to landscape. That gives us a sketch of the sociogeography of Indian food…
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6 Aug 2024
"Why do they still consider us untouchable? Why don't they consider us equals? That is the question. There is something wrong in society, in their thinking, in the religion."
It is a treasure trove of practices and discourse that I am going to mull over for a long time to come
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6 Aug 2024
Two dominant Euro-American theorizations on appetite and power, which are omnivorousness and virtuous vegetarianism, fall flat on their faces here showing us how big theory coming out of traditional disciplines in western universities are in fact provincial
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