Food, Faith and Gender in South Asia: The Cultural Politics of Women's Food Practices (Criminal Practice Series)

"How do women express individual agency when engaging in seemingly prescribed or approved practices such as religious fasting? How are sectarian identities played out in the performance of food piety? What do food practices tell us about how women negotiate changes in family relationships? This collection offers a variety of distinct perspectives on these questions. Organized thematically, areas explored include the subordination of women, the nature of resistance, boundary making and the construction of identity and community. Methodologically, the essays use imaginative reconstructions of women's experiences, particularly where the only accounts available are written by men. The essays focus on Hindus and Muslims in South Asia, Sri Lankan Buddhist women and South Asians in the diaspora in the US and UK. Pioneering new research into food and gender roles in South Asia, this will be of use to students of food studies, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies"-- Provided by publisher Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series 3 Title 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 Contributors 8 Introduction 12 Part One The subordination of women and the nature of resistance 40 1 Curing the body and soul: Health, food and herbal medicines for nineteenth-century South Asian Muslim women 42 2 The worship of taste: Rokeya Hossain and the politics of ritual fasting 66 3 Religious recipes: Culinary Motherlines of feasts and fasts in India 84 Part Two Boundary-making, the construction of identity and commensality 104 4 Transcendental transactions: Food practices among Barelwi Muslims 106 5 Between khatm-e qur’ans and slametans: Gender and class in South Asian and Indonesian interdomestic rituals 132 6 Buddhist women and food-gifting to monks 150 Part Three Everyday life, power and agency 160 7 Women’s ritually shared bodies and food-penance in rural Maharashtra 162 8 Eating and fasting as a complex professional strategy 182 9 Fasting, feasting: Social and religious food practices at a Barelwi girls’ madrasa 194 10 Praying in the kitchen: The Tablighi Jama‘at and female piety 212 Index 228