Crisis, Identity, and Social Distinction

Cultural Politics of Food, Taste, and Consumption in Late Colonial Bengal

Bibliographic Data

ID4300895
AuthorsSrirupa Prasad
Year2006
Volume19
Issue3
Pages245-265
Publication date2006-09-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Historical Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0952-1909 • E-ISSN: 1467-6443
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1467-6443.2006.00281.x
OpenAlexW1978652426
LanguageEN
Citations received12

This paper explores the culture of taste in the production of an urban, Hindu, Bengali middle class in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Bengal/India. It analyzes how the Bengali middle class, the bhadralok, attempted to construct a "doxa" of gastronomy in order to subsume a dominant position for itself and to classify hierarchically other classes and social groups. The aspirations of this class as the future guardians of an incipient nation were in reality a politics of self-identity, which was based on ideas of a cultural exclusivity. This politics of self-identity for the Bengali middle class were inextricably inter-woven with issues of modernity, nationalism, and colonialism. Through my analysis, I stress the importance of the "historical" or the "collective", particularly in the context of formation of the bhadralok, as a dominant class

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · BENGAL · Bengali · Colonialism · Consumption (sociology · Cultural identity · Hinduism · Identity (music · Identity formation · Linguistics · Middle class · Modernity · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Taste · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Psychology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Religious Studies

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