84 – Relational entanglements of food, affect and embodiment

October 1, 2025

1:45 pm

H13

Food and food relations hold multiple meanings, stir emotions and mediate social dynamics, reflecting and shaping the messiness of everyday life. While the lenses of economics and governance have elucidated the varied politics of food production and consumption, they lack perspectives on the role of embodiment and affect. This omission risks homogenising how people feel about social inequalities embedded in eating practices, processes of socio-ecological change, or the bundle of relationships that make food production, preparation and collection practices possible. In South Asia, multiple food cultures coexist with the intersections of class, indigeneity, caste, gender and religion co-constituting one’s access to and experience of food. For instance, food offers a sense of home, comfort and community for migrants across India. Yet, their food practices often transgress the social order, producing discontent expressed as disgust and exclusion. Moreover, affective boundary-making in relation to the practice of caste and anti-Muslim sentiment, impact marginalised communities, particularly in relation to meat consumption. Focusing on the embodied experiences and affective relations of food this panel aims to ‘think from the feeling body’ about the entangled politics of food. We are therefore interested in approaches from the anthropology and sociology of food, as well as feminist political ecology, which revolve around issues of power, subjectivity, in/justice, affect, emotion, marginalisation, belonging and (dis)connection, among others. Hoping to build on this existing scholarship, we seek contributions on, but not limited to, the following areas of concern: • embodied inequalities in agri-food networks • intersecting structures of oppression in everyday food and eating relations • embodied knowledge politics of subaltern food cultures • the everyday politics of Adivasi land, food and intangible heritage • embodied experiences of toxicity in food and farming • marginalised food provisioning practices such as marine and terrestrial foraging or honey collection.

Convenors

Swathi Manalodiparambil
Enid Still

Presentations

Re-imagining Lakmi

Trivedi Nidhi - University of Groningen

Intersection of Food, Celebration and Heritage: Synthesising the Tribal Festivals Revolving around Foodways in Central India

Srivastava Akash Kumar - IIT (BHU) Varanasi, IIT (BHU) Varanasi, Varanasi, India
Yadav Akanksha - IIT (BHU) Varanasi, IIT (BHU) Varanasi, Varanasi, India
Vinita Chandra - Department of Humanistic Studies, Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi, 221005, India.

Seeds of Resistance: Adivasi Women’s “Acts of Care” in Sustaining Community Futures

Raonka Pallavi - Women and Gender Studies, University Of Missouri, Columbia, United States
Tula Meenal - NESRC (North Eastern Social Research Centre ), Guwahati, India, NESRC (North Eastern Social Research Centre ), Guwahati, India, Guwahati, India

The Quest for a Bare Minimum: Diet, Exploitation and Nutritional Science in the Prisons of Bengal (1860-1900)

Poly Mahmuda Akter - University of York, University of York, York, United Kingdom

Culinary Marginality and Resistance: Food Practices in Northeast India and the Politics of Purity.

NEOG TONMOYEE RANI - Wolfsburg, Germany

Histories of Hunger & Shifts in Food Cultures: Understanding Caste, Health & Well-Being

Deshpande Mita - Independent Researcher, Hamburg, Germany