A body set between hot and cold: everyday sensory labor and attunement in an Indian village. (15th March 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kantor, Hayden S.
• Is Part Of: Food, culture, & society. Volume 22:Number 2(2019)
• Page Start: 237
• Page End: 252
• Publication Date: 2019-03-15
• Subjects: Food -- sensory labor -- attunement -- embodiment -- humoral frameworks -- rural life -- India; Food -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Nutrition policy -- Periodicals; 641
• DOI: 10.1080/15528014.2019.1573045
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1751-7443

Abstract

ABSTRACT: In Bihar, India, rural people conceptualize the body through a humoral framework and strive to regulate the body by balancing flows of heating and cooling foods. Rural people's sense of embodied well-being emerges not just through the sensory aspects of eating but also through the ongoing labor of preparing food and managing the body vis-à-vis the surrounding environment. An ethnographic perspective on rural foodways brings together two distinct types of labor: preparing food for consumption (labor qua labor) and attuning to foods, the body, and the surrounding environment (the labor of sensing). Yet the labor of sensing is often written out of economic accounts that privilege output and productivity. This article presents local classification systems of food to show how Biharis attune their bodies and eating habits to the time of day and season. Ideas about what constitutes a proper diet and how best to care for the body elucidate social distinctions according to class and gender. The task of winnowing cūṛā, a popular dish of flattened rice, reveals how the labor of sensing undergirds productive labor. These practices of everyday sensory labor and attunement are vital to sustaining rural livelihoods and maintaining health against the backdrop of economic precarity.