Food Practices and structuring power hierarchies

Abstract

The present endeavour is to understand how food traditions and practices are taken as one of the strategies employed by the social categories (social groups such as castes & religions) to stay and to be located in the desirable positions in the social hierarchies. Food is an important tool used by the caste, religion, class categories to define and claim their respective positions in the social structure. Food is an identical agency that defines the boundary, pattern and possibilities of a social group and an individual. Food system is worthy of study because it is a fine test-bed for analytical considerations of social change and practices. The dietary and culinary practices and traditions are social product, which are culturally used by the social categories who claim upper position and used to assign lower position to other groups in the ladder of social structure in one way or other. Narratives of food and dietary practices are used as a tool to (re)define social positions by the caste and religious groups, by which these categories locate their positions in the society as higher or lower. Food traditions, practices and the narratives are used as resource for the construction of power hierarchies and hegemonies. The power relations and the process of constructing hegemonies cutting across caste and religious identities would be sufficient enough to be explained through studying the nature and the dynamics of food practices.