I teach at the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, South Asian University, Delhi. My research interests are food, labour, senses, migration and technology. I have been been working on the life of sweets and sweetness in West Bengal and Bangladesh. I have co-anchored an art research project on Smells of the city with a focus on Delhi supported by Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Delhi. I am interested in collaborative research on smells, labour and food in South Asia. Recently I have started to anchor a research platform on travel and co anchor a podcast called Travel Matters.
Through an ethnography of Bogurar doi, a sweetened fermented milk dessert distinctive to the nort... more Through an ethnography of Bogurar doi, a sweetened fermented milk dessert distinctive to the northern region of Bangladesh, I propose to explore the politics of naming of a food item linked to a place, especially in a geography that has witnessed three historic redrawings of borders, forced migration and the changing form of labor involved in doi -making. Instead of the narratives of continuity of craft traditions, I trace three significant “movements” (West 2021) that are integral to Bogurar doi. One, a history of “local” breeds of cows is produced by confluences (Banerjee-Dube 2016), thereby challenging notions of territoriality and taste-making (Leong-Salobir, Ray and Rohel 2016); second, a history of labor integral to doi-making, the of Goalas/ Ghoshs, that is evident in the fictional representation of undivided Bengal and legends associated with Bogurar doi; and third, everyday narratives of “repetition” (Sennett 2008) that is inherent to bodily labor performed on milk to create this microbial product. These three movements show how placemaking evolves at the cusp of ecology and changing forms of caste and labor associated with the milk trade. Taken together, these three movements challenge the mythic notion of continuity and provide a much-needed reading of ruptures and a processual reading of decolonization of placemaking in food traditions.
Christos Lynteris is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews, UK... more Christos Lynteris is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews, UK. He is known for his work Human Extinction and the Pandemic Imaginary (Lynteris 2020), Anthropology of Epidemics (Kelly et al. 2019) and Plague and the City (Engelmann et al. 2018). The following interview was conducted via email. Ishita: Thank you for agreeing to do this interview. Can you share with our readers your journey in the study of epidemics and pandemic? Christos Lynteris: My engagement with epidemics as an anthropologist dates back to my PhD years at the University of St Andrews, when I studied the impact of three epidemics on state formation in modern China. After defending my PhD in 2010, I joined The Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) of the University of Cambridge, where I first led a 2-year research on the social ecology of plague in Inner Asia under a Mellon/Newton postdoctoral fellowship, and then a 5-year European Research Counci...
This article explores the postcolonial state\u2019s experiments with logistics through the constr... more This article explores the postcolonial state\u2019s experiments with logistics through the construction of industrial corridors. Through the concept of \u201ccorridor economy\u201d it traces the shift from special economic zones to corridors, with a special focus on the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) to understand how land, labor, and capital are being organized through new governance strategies. By closely analyzing the violent labor unrest that broke out in the Maruti Suzuki plant in Manesar, an industrial center of prominence in the DMIC project, the article explores the ways the corridor economy model is being projected as the future of development. In so doing, the article positions this model as a neoliberal institution that marks new frontiers of capital and asks how the struggles crisscrossing the spaces of the DMIC reveal the paradoxical and heterogeneous political constellations of capital-labor relations and the transformations of the state form
The nationalist discourse has always tried to locate women’s participation as a journey from priv... more The nationalist discourse has always tried to locate women’s participation as a journey from private to public locating women as “symbolic bearers of the nation” but “denied any direct relation to national agency or citizenship” (Roy 2005: 41). The denial of national agency can be traced back to the “Indian” nationalist movement; specifically the nineteenth century where “the movement for women’s education” is often read as “the rising middle class’s attempt to adept its women to a Western milieu” (Kumar 1993: 14). The traditions of the andarmahal1 were condemned; particularly women’s participation in popular cultural forms such as songs and recitals (kirtans, panchalis and kathakathas2). These cultural forms were seen as low and obscene by the rising middle class (Banerjee in Kumar ibid: 15). In an attempt to ape the “colonial” lifestyle there was an attempt to redefine the public-private relationship. The “home” /“private” associated with women had to be reformed so that it could ...
International Journal of South Asian Studies , 2021
This essay is an ethnography of 'Cadbury Mishti' 1-a new taxonomic category generated by the prom... more This essay is an ethnography of 'Cadbury Mishti' 1-a new taxonomic category generated by the promotional campaign jointly run by a Chocolate giant and the Branding Solutions Team owned by Eastern India's largest Media house. Since 2011, sweetshops from Kolkata and other districts had been invited to participate in a three to four-month long competition to create chocolate-based delicacies. Sweets in Bengal are primarily made from chhana (coagulated milk separated from whey water) and kheer (desiccated milk). Through an ethnographic engagement with the process of making of 'Cadbury Mishti' I demonstrate how 'inter-referentiality' of place, and cultural sameness created through kin-ties go into the making of 'fusion food' in today's India. This process is remarkably unique. Here the technology remains local and the core narrative of 'authenticity' is hinged on the celebration of craftsmanship.
This article stems from an ongoing collaborative ethnographic project with a Delhi-based women wo... more This article stems from an ongoing collaborative ethnographic project with a Delhi-based women workers' union known as Shehri Mahila Kamgar Union. Since 2015 I have been studying how domestic workers view the relationship between the senses and work. The main objective is to understand how the "senses" in general and smell in particular have been invisibilised in discussions on "intimate labor." While analyses of the sensory labor and synesthetic reason involved in craftwork and food preparation celebrate sensoriality, the location of smells in intimate labor, especially domestic work, has been occulted. I propose the term "intimate sense-labor" to foreground the study of the acts of erasure of smells that are central to the sensory practice of domestic workers. Intimate sense-labor consists of strictly disciplining the senses and controlling sensory emanations while reproducing the intimate smells of a household through acts of cleaning, washing, and cooking. Building upon everyday work narratives of domestic workers, I expose the workings of "intimate sense-labor" through an examination of the smells of happiness, fear, and disgust.
... Ishita Dey ∗ ... duties to the Developer or the entrepreneur; (b) delegating the powers confe... more ... Ishita Dey ∗ ... duties to the Developer or the entrepreneur; (b) delegating the powers conferred upon any person or authority under any State Act to the Development Commissioner in relation to the Developer or the entrepreneur (Source: SEZ Act 2005) SN Tripathy (2008) brings ...
Food, Culture and Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, 2012
In a radical departure from previous ethnographies of food, this book asks how and why food is pi... more In a radical departure from previous ethnographies of food, this book asks how and why food is pivotal to social relations and forms of identity that emerge as normal and not-normal. It does so by describing the production, consumption, distribution, and disposal of ‘normal Bengali food’ in middle-class households that employ cooks from poor classes, and in Bengali restaurants, in contemporary Calcutta (India) and Dhaka (Bangladesh). In a rare comparative foray into Bengali Hindu and Muslim food-ways on both sides of the border, the book includes addas (‘idle-talk’) and interviews with both men and women. It initiates a dialogue that links issues of agency, place, hospitality, and ownership with a new field that places food as an ‘artefact’ at the centre of its inquiry. It invites the reader throughout to approach food afresh, as the key that unlocks the complexities of what is mundane yet profound — the everyday. The book thus analyses the constant and fraught negotiations that feed into definitions of normality, class and identity through networks of human and non-human interactions – persons, places, and things - in the deeply intimate yet intensely public domain of food. Food transactions here provide a window into shifting configurations of trust, power, and conflict integral to social relationships, shaped by events such as the 1943–44 Bengal famine, the 1947 partition of India, and the 1971 Bangladesh War. Table of Contents: List of Photographs Foreword by Marilyn Strathern Preface and Acknowledgements Note on Language, Translation, and Transliteration of Bengali Words 1. Food as Agency: Introducing Normality 2. The Actants of a Normal Foodscape 3. 'Like Everyday’: Creating Normality 4. The Everyday Normal Sacred Kitchen 5. Of Seducing and Respectable, Hospitable and Stingy Foods: Subjectivities of Normal Food 6. Cha (tea), Gan (song), aar (and) Adda (‘idle’/’care-less’ talk): Making and Consuming Normal Food Identities 7. Normal Food and Ownership 8. Postprandial Ruminations Bibliography Index
Through an ethnography of Bogurar doi, a sweetened fermented milk dessert distinctive to the nort... more Through an ethnography of Bogurar doi, a sweetened fermented milk dessert distinctive to the northern region of Bangladesh, I propose to explore the politics of naming of a food item linked to a place, especially in a geography that has witnessed three historic redrawings of borders, forced migration and the changing form of labor involved in doi -making. Instead of the narratives of continuity of craft traditions, I trace three significant “movements” (West 2021) that are integral to Bogurar doi. One, a history of “local” breeds of cows is produced by confluences (Banerjee-Dube 2016), thereby challenging notions of territoriality and taste-making (Leong-Salobir, Ray and Rohel 2016); second, a history of labor integral to doi-making, the of Goalas/ Ghoshs, that is evident in the fictional representation of undivided Bengal and legends associated with Bogurar doi; and third, everyday narratives of “repetition” (Sennett 2008) that is inherent to bodily labor performed on milk to create this microbial product. These three movements show how placemaking evolves at the cusp of ecology and changing forms of caste and labor associated with the milk trade. Taken together, these three movements challenge the mythic notion of continuity and provide a much-needed reading of ruptures and a processual reading of decolonization of placemaking in food traditions.
Christos Lynteris is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews, UK... more Christos Lynteris is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews, UK. He is known for his work Human Extinction and the Pandemic Imaginary (Lynteris 2020), Anthropology of Epidemics (Kelly et al. 2019) and Plague and the City (Engelmann et al. 2018). The following interview was conducted via email. Ishita: Thank you for agreeing to do this interview. Can you share with our readers your journey in the study of epidemics and pandemic? Christos Lynteris: My engagement with epidemics as an anthropologist dates back to my PhD years at the University of St Andrews, when I studied the impact of three epidemics on state formation in modern China. After defending my PhD in 2010, I joined The Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) of the University of Cambridge, where I first led a 2-year research on the social ecology of plague in Inner Asia under a Mellon/Newton postdoctoral fellowship, and then a 5-year European Research Counci...
This article explores the postcolonial state\u2019s experiments with logistics through the constr... more This article explores the postcolonial state\u2019s experiments with logistics through the construction of industrial corridors. Through the concept of \u201ccorridor economy\u201d it traces the shift from special economic zones to corridors, with a special focus on the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) to understand how land, labor, and capital are being organized through new governance strategies. By closely analyzing the violent labor unrest that broke out in the Maruti Suzuki plant in Manesar, an industrial center of prominence in the DMIC project, the article explores the ways the corridor economy model is being projected as the future of development. In so doing, the article positions this model as a neoliberal institution that marks new frontiers of capital and asks how the struggles crisscrossing the spaces of the DMIC reveal the paradoxical and heterogeneous political constellations of capital-labor relations and the transformations of the state form
The nationalist discourse has always tried to locate women’s participation as a journey from priv... more The nationalist discourse has always tried to locate women’s participation as a journey from private to public locating women as “symbolic bearers of the nation” but “denied any direct relation to national agency or citizenship” (Roy 2005: 41). The denial of national agency can be traced back to the “Indian” nationalist movement; specifically the nineteenth century where “the movement for women’s education” is often read as “the rising middle class’s attempt to adept its women to a Western milieu” (Kumar 1993: 14). The traditions of the andarmahal1 were condemned; particularly women’s participation in popular cultural forms such as songs and recitals (kirtans, panchalis and kathakathas2). These cultural forms were seen as low and obscene by the rising middle class (Banerjee in Kumar ibid: 15). In an attempt to ape the “colonial” lifestyle there was an attempt to redefine the public-private relationship. The “home” /“private” associated with women had to be reformed so that it could ...
International Journal of South Asian Studies , 2021
This essay is an ethnography of 'Cadbury Mishti' 1-a new taxonomic category generated by the prom... more This essay is an ethnography of 'Cadbury Mishti' 1-a new taxonomic category generated by the promotional campaign jointly run by a Chocolate giant and the Branding Solutions Team owned by Eastern India's largest Media house. Since 2011, sweetshops from Kolkata and other districts had been invited to participate in a three to four-month long competition to create chocolate-based delicacies. Sweets in Bengal are primarily made from chhana (coagulated milk separated from whey water) and kheer (desiccated milk). Through an ethnographic engagement with the process of making of 'Cadbury Mishti' I demonstrate how 'inter-referentiality' of place, and cultural sameness created through kin-ties go into the making of 'fusion food' in today's India. This process is remarkably unique. Here the technology remains local and the core narrative of 'authenticity' is hinged on the celebration of craftsmanship.
This article stems from an ongoing collaborative ethnographic project with a Delhi-based women wo... more This article stems from an ongoing collaborative ethnographic project with a Delhi-based women workers' union known as Shehri Mahila Kamgar Union. Since 2015 I have been studying how domestic workers view the relationship between the senses and work. The main objective is to understand how the "senses" in general and smell in particular have been invisibilised in discussions on "intimate labor." While analyses of the sensory labor and synesthetic reason involved in craftwork and food preparation celebrate sensoriality, the location of smells in intimate labor, especially domestic work, has been occulted. I propose the term "intimate sense-labor" to foreground the study of the acts of erasure of smells that are central to the sensory practice of domestic workers. Intimate sense-labor consists of strictly disciplining the senses and controlling sensory emanations while reproducing the intimate smells of a household through acts of cleaning, washing, and cooking. Building upon everyday work narratives of domestic workers, I expose the workings of "intimate sense-labor" through an examination of the smells of happiness, fear, and disgust.
... Ishita Dey ∗ ... duties to the Developer or the entrepreneur; (b) delegating the powers confe... more ... Ishita Dey ∗ ... duties to the Developer or the entrepreneur; (b) delegating the powers conferred upon any person or authority under any State Act to the Development Commissioner in relation to the Developer or the entrepreneur (Source: SEZ Act 2005) SN Tripathy (2008) brings ...
Food, Culture and Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, 2012
In a radical departure from previous ethnographies of food, this book asks how and why food is pi... more In a radical departure from previous ethnographies of food, this book asks how and why food is pivotal to social relations and forms of identity that emerge as normal and not-normal. It does so by describing the production, consumption, distribution, and disposal of ‘normal Bengali food’ in middle-class households that employ cooks from poor classes, and in Bengali restaurants, in contemporary Calcutta (India) and Dhaka (Bangladesh). In a rare comparative foray into Bengali Hindu and Muslim food-ways on both sides of the border, the book includes addas (‘idle-talk’) and interviews with both men and women. It initiates a dialogue that links issues of agency, place, hospitality, and ownership with a new field that places food as an ‘artefact’ at the centre of its inquiry. It invites the reader throughout to approach food afresh, as the key that unlocks the complexities of what is mundane yet profound — the everyday. The book thus analyses the constant and fraught negotiations that feed into definitions of normality, class and identity through networks of human and non-human interactions – persons, places, and things - in the deeply intimate yet intensely public domain of food. Food transactions here provide a window into shifting configurations of trust, power, and conflict integral to social relationships, shaped by events such as the 1943–44 Bengal famine, the 1947 partition of India, and the 1971 Bangladesh War. Table of Contents: List of Photographs Foreword by Marilyn Strathern Preface and Acknowledgements Note on Language, Translation, and Transliteration of Bengali Words 1. Food as Agency: Introducing Normality 2. The Actants of a Normal Foodscape 3. 'Like Everyday’: Creating Normality 4. The Everyday Normal Sacred Kitchen 5. Of Seducing and Respectable, Hospitable and Stingy Foods: Subjectivities of Normal Food 6. Cha (tea), Gan (song), aar (and) Adda (‘idle’/’care-less’ talk): Making and Consuming Normal Food Identities 7. Normal Food and Ownership 8. Postprandial Ruminations Bibliography Index
Beyond Kolkata : Rajarhat and the Dystopia of Urban Imagination, 2016
This book examines the politics behind, and the socio-economic and ecological repercussions of, t... more This book examines the politics behind, and the socio-economic and ecological repercussions of, the making of a new township, variously called New Town, Megacity or Jyoti Basu Nagar, in Rajarhat near Kolkata. Conceived by the West Bengal state government in the mid-1990s, in pandering to the vision of urban planners of creating a hi-tech town beyond an unruly, crowded Kolkata, and feeding the hunger of realtors and developers, the city is built on the foundations of coercive, even violent, land acquisition, state largesse and corruption — and at the cost of erasing a self-sufficient subsistence economy and despoiling a fragile environment. Yet, after its completion and departure of construction labour, the new town appears as a necropolis, a ghost city, that belies its promised image of an urban utopia, even as the displaced locals lead a precarious, mobile existence as ‘transit labour’, engaged in odd and informal jobs.
Written on the basis of intensive fieldwork, government documents, court records, and chronicles of public protests, this book broadly analyses the politics and economics of urbanisation in the age of post-colonial capitalism, particularly the paradoxical combination of neoliberal and primitive modes of capital accumulation upon which the global emergence of ‘new towns’ is based.
Departing from the dominant styles of urban studies that focus on cultural or spatial analysis of cities, the authors show the links between changes in space, technology, political economy, class composition, and forms of urban politics which give concrete shape to a city. It will immensely interest those in sociology, political science, economics, development studies, urban studies, policy and governance studies, and history.
What do people reach out for when they reach out for a cup of tea/ coffee or a plate of food? Des... more What do people reach out for when they reach out for a cup of tea/ coffee or a plate of food? Despite unequal relations along the commodity chain of most plantation based food commodities such as tea, coffee and sugar, what goes into making a cup of nice tea? Sarah Besky’s recently published work Tasting Qualities. The Past and Future of Tea is a timely addition to the literature that explores how the plantation economy thrives on an unequal relationship between the labourers, plantation managers, plantation owners, traders and finally how this commodity chain translates into the making of a ‘quality’ tea.
Uploads
Papers by Ishita Dey
Written on the basis of intensive fieldwork, government documents, court records, and chronicles of public protests, this book broadly analyses the politics and economics of urbanisation in the age of post-colonial capitalism, particularly the paradoxical combination of neoliberal and primitive modes of capital accumulation upon which the global emergence of ‘new towns’ is based.
Departing from the dominant styles of urban studies that focus on cultural or spatial analysis of cities, the authors show the links between changes in space, technology, political economy, class composition, and forms of urban politics which give concrete shape to a city. It will immensely interest those in sociology, political science, economics, development studies, urban studies, policy and governance studies, and history.