Uneven Terrain

This book presents an ethnography of foodways of Rarh, an ecoculture zone in West Bengal, India. Through lens of food ethnography, it examines the dynamics of social, political, and economic relations in rural areas of West Bengal. It also assesses the influence of global forces on resource bases, the plurality of cultural expressions, and identity of the people in the region. The book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of anthropology, sociology, history, geography, ethnography, food studies and South Asian studies.

Kanchan Mukhopadhyay is an independent anthropologist. After a brief stint at the Indian Museum, he joined the Anthropological Survey in India, where he worked for over three decades. He was guest teacher at University of Calcutta, and Tagore National Fellow for Cultural Research, Ministry of Culture, Government of India. He has studied identity issues among migrants, the effect of exogenous change factors on small-scale communities, methodological and ethical issues in social science research, border area studies, anthropology of food, and visual anthropology

List of figures viii Acknowledgements ix 1 Introduction 1 2 The spectrum: Fission and fusion 21 3 The spectrum: Consumption 40 4 Life amid the forest 61 5 Transformation amid the forest 81 6 Relegated people: Lost glory 100 7 Relegated people: After scarcity 120 8 Subtly discrete: Differences and convergence 142 9 Subtly discrete: Variations and adjustments 162 10 The satellite 178 11 Uneven terrain 197 References 215 Index 222