Rachel Berger
Biographic Data
| ID | 3750966 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rachel Berger |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rachel |
| FAMILY NAME | Berger |
| SIGNATURE | BERGER R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Concordia University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4334-7077 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 15 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 19 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Intractable Issues
How Vegetarianism Went Global
Vegetarians developed transnational ties between India and Europe, sharing ideals of purity that also contributed to the formation of today’s Hindu nationalism
The Gastropoetics of Sex
In this paper, I explore the ways in which queer sex acts and orientations come to be coded through other modes of signifying excess in colonial and nationalist discourse. I explore the way in which food and sex are held on a continuum that ties gluttony to abstinence, creating the standards for respectable sexuality and a map for flouting them. Fundamentally, I look at how sex and food are conflated, especially when enjoyed or imagined in ways o…
Imperial Maladies
Clarified Commodities
This article explores genealogies of food, taste, nutrition and questions of governance through attempts to regulate the production and sale of vanaspati ghee in interwar India. It explores the "ghee wars" of 1927-29, when Punjab Province pushed to regulate the production of ghee alternatives so as to ensure the quality of the products on offer and regulate the trade in mass-produced food commodities. The possibility of a regulatory system brough…
Doctoring Traditions
Well-Mannered Medicine
Alimentary Affairs
This essay surveys a broad landscape of studies that take up the preparation, imbibing, and distribution of food in significant ways, focusing on the way in which the field of food studies in South Asia is cohering in recent scholarship. It begins with histories of the imperial period that frame food around imperial encounter and then move on to studies that address the crises of food through famine and their political aftermath. It then turns to…
South Asian Tissue Economies
Samiksha Sehrawat, Colonial Medical Care in North India
In this book, Samiksha Sehrawat traces the emergence of medical institutions in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century India. Rooted in a history of the financial quandaries that both allowed for and also limited the establishment of medical institutions, Sehrawat examines the complicated financial arrangements around the different scales of government at work in colonial India. The book begins with a history of the rise of the biomedical dispen…
Indigenous and Western Medicine in Colonial India
Introduction
Community-Based Adaptation to Climate Change
Ayurveda Made Modern
This book explores the ways in which Ayurveda, the oldest medical tradition of the Indian subcontinent, was transformed from a composite of 'ancient' medical knowledge into a 'modern' medical system
Introduction
Ayurveda is the oldest ongoing medical system in South Asia, with ancient Indian roots and global contemporary wings. Even the most mainstream international supermarkets contain boxes of Ayurvedic tea; spas and salons offer Ayurvedic massage; and major celebrities the world over advocate Ayurvedic diets and cleanses (characterized, mostly, by deprivation and the robust effects of fibre). Associated with the most primal, basic iterations of a medi…
Embodying Consumption
In Chapter 2, we saw the ways in which a composite tradition called the indigenous medical systems came to have a more complicated meaning in the eyes of the state, as the GOI encountered – and was forced to contend with – its reliance on the employment of native medical practitioners and indigenous medical practices. The government’s Medical Board unravelled the question of the Indigenous Systems of Medicine by dealing with the position of pract…
Between Digestion and Desire
This paper takes up the project of conceptualizing a new history of food in India through an exploration of conversations about food, digestion, desire, and embodiment that took place in Hindi-language publications in early-twentieth century North India. Through an exploration of cookbooks, guides to health and wellness, and food advertising spanning the 1920s to the 1940s, conversations about food preparation, consumption, and distribution come …
From the biomoral to the biopolitical
This article presents a political reading of the history of Ayurveda in modernity, focusing on its deployment as a political force, while concurrently exploring its role in subject formation around issues of colonization, citizenship, nationalism and the politics of belonging. In it, the politics of Ayurveda are hinged upon two conceptual poles: firstly, the construction of the biomoral in discussions of Ayurveda and, secondly, the absorption of …
Understanding Climate Change Adaptation
Kitty Lloyd Jones
Between Digestion and Desire
This paper takes up the project of conceptualizing a new history of food in India through an exploration of conversations about food, digestion, desire, and embodiment that took place in Hindi-language publications in early-twentieth century North India. Through an exploration of cookbooks, guides to health and wellness, and food advertising spanning the 1920s to the 1940s, conversations about food preparation, consumption, and distribution come …
Alimentary Affairs
This essay surveys a broad landscape of studies that take up the preparation, imbibing, and distribution of food in significant ways, focusing on the way in which the field of food studies in South Asia is cohering in recent scholarship. It begins with histories of the imperial period that frame food around imperial encounter and then move on to studies that address the crises of food through famine and their political aftermath. It then turns to…
Clarified Commodities
This article explores genealogies of food, taste, nutrition and questions of governance through attempts to regulate the production and sale of vanaspati ghee in interwar India. It explores the "ghee wars" of 1927-29, when Punjab Province pushed to regulate the production of ghee alternatives so as to ensure the quality of the products on offer and regulate the trade in mass-produced food commodities. The possibility of a regulatory system brough…
From the biomoral to the biopolitical
This article presents a political reading of the history of Ayurveda in modernity, focusing on its deployment as a political force, while concurrently exploring its role in subject formation around issues of colonization, citizenship, nationalism and the politics of belonging. In it, the politics of Ayurveda are hinged upon two conceptual poles: firstly, the construction of the biomoral in discussions of Ayurveda and, secondly, the absorption of …
Kitty Lloyd Jones
Understanding Climate Change Adaptation
From the biomoral to the biopolitical
This article presents a political reading of the history of Ayurveda in modernity, focusing on its deployment as a political force, while concurrently exploring its role in subject formation around issues of colonization, citizenship, nationalism and the politics of belonging. In it, the politics of Ayurveda are hinged upon two conceptual poles: firstly, the construction of the biomoral in discussions of Ayurveda and, secondly, the absorption of …
Ayurveda Made Modern
This book explores the ways in which Ayurveda, the oldest medical tradition of the Indian subcontinent, was transformed from a composite of 'ancient' medical knowledge into a 'modern' medical system
Introduction
Ayurveda is the oldest ongoing medical system in South Asia, with ancient Indian roots and global contemporary wings. Even the most mainstream international supermarkets contain boxes of Ayurvedic tea; spas and salons offer Ayurvedic massage; and major celebrities the world over advocate Ayurvedic diets and cleanses (characterized, mostly, by deprivation and the robust effects of fibre). Associated with the most primal, basic iterations of a medi…
Embodying Consumption
In Chapter 2, we saw the ways in which a composite tradition called the indigenous medical systems came to have a more complicated meaning in the eyes of the state, as the GOI encountered – and was forced to contend with – its reliance on the employment of native medical practitioners and indigenous medical practices. The government’s Medical Board unravelled the question of the Indigenous Systems of Medicine by dealing with the position of pract…
Between Digestion and Desire
This paper takes up the project of conceptualizing a new history of food in India through an exploration of conversations about food, digestion, desire, and embodiment that took place in Hindi-language publications in early-twentieth century North India. Through an exploration of cookbooks, guides to health and wellness, and food advertising spanning the 1920s to the 1940s, conversations about food preparation, consumption, and distribution come …
Introduction
Community-Based Adaptation to Climate Change
South Asian Tissue Economies
Samiksha Sehrawat, Colonial Medical Care in North India
In this book, Samiksha Sehrawat traces the emergence of medical institutions in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century India. Rooted in a history of the financial quandaries that both allowed for and also limited the establishment of medical institutions, Sehrawat examines the complicated financial arrangements around the different scales of government at work in colonial India. The book begins with a history of the rise of the biomedical dispen…
Indigenous and Western Medicine in Colonial India
Doctoring Traditions
Well-Mannered Medicine
Alimentary Affairs
This essay surveys a broad landscape of studies that take up the preparation, imbibing, and distribution of food in significant ways, focusing on the way in which the field of food studies in South Asia is cohering in recent scholarship. It begins with histories of the imperial period that frame food around imperial encounter and then move on to studies that address the crises of food through famine and their political aftermath. It then turns to…
Imperial Maladies
Clarified Commodities
This article explores genealogies of food, taste, nutrition and questions of governance through attempts to regulate the production and sale of vanaspati ghee in interwar India. It explores the "ghee wars" of 1927-29, when Punjab Province pushed to regulate the production of ghee alternatives so as to ensure the quality of the products on offer and regulate the trade in mass-produced food commodities. The possibility of a regulatory system brough…
The Gastropoetics of Sex
In this paper, I explore the ways in which queer sex acts and orientations come to be coded through other modes of signifying excess in colonial and nationalist discourse. I explore the way in which food and sex are held on a continuum that ties gluttony to abstinence, creating the standards for respectable sexuality and a map for flouting them. Fundamentally, I look at how sex and food are conflated, especially when enjoyed or imagined in ways o…
How Vegetarianism Went Global
Vegetarians developed transnational ties between India and Europe, sharing ideals of purity that also contributed to the formation of today’s Hindu nationalism
Intractable Issues
Political science (13 works) · Law (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Geography (8 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (6 works) · Colonialism (6 works) · History (6 works) · Medicine (6 works) · Biology (5 works)