What is food without love? The micro-politics of food practices in South Asians in Britain, India and Pakistan

CHOWBEY, Punita (2017). What is food without love? The micro-politics of food practices in South Asians in Britain, India and Pakistan. Sociological Research Online, 22 (3), 165-185.

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Abstract

This article draws on Morgan’s theorisation of family life as consisting of political, moral, and emotional economies to examine the interplay of women’s control over resources, gender norms, and expectations of intimacy in the context of household food consumption. The research that informs the article focuses on findings from 84 interviews with two South Asian groups: Pakistani Muslim and Gujarati Hindu women with at least one dependent child and from a variety of occupations and household compositions. In examining everyday food consumption, the research demonstrates how gender hierarchies are reproduced by parallel, mutually reinforcing, political, moral, and emotional economies. The women in the study sometimes struggled to subvert gender oppression and negotiate more powerful positions within the household through food management and/or employing manipulative and deceptive tactics. The article argues that, while access to economic resources is important if women are to achieve desirable food and nutritional outcomes, it is not in itself sufficient to meet this aim. Instead, the interplay of resources, gender norms, and conjugal relations are central to household food consumption.

Item Type:	Article
Research Institute, Centre or Group:	Centre for Health and Social Care Research
Identification Number:	10.1177/1360780417726958
Depositing User:	Jill Hazard
Date Deposited:	26 Jan 2017 16:45
Last Modified:	27 Feb 2018 20:14
URI:	http://shura.shu.ac.uk/id/eprint/14948

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