Community Reflections
Dining Out in North-East India: Restaurants in Mizoram
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jagdish Lal Dawar
Mizoram is one of the seven states of north-east India. The tribes inhabiting this region are variously known as Mizo, Kuki, Chin and Zo. Though a few bakery restaurants had been established during 1970’s and 1980’s, it is mainly from the last decade of twentieth century and specifically in the last two decades of this century that the modern restaurants were started and became popular. The restaurants have created new tastes in different parts of Mizoram. One of the features of these restaurants is the introduction of menu in a printed form. The other characteristic of these restaurants is catering to the needs of not only different sections of the Mizo society but also to the persons coming from other parts of India and therefore, the food that is served is a hybrid one. There has been in recent times the emergence of fast food restaurants and most important among these is the establishment of KFC. However, it draws consumers from upper strata of the society and educated middle class only. For this social group it is the space for creating cultural capital for them. The modern restaurants have generated a culture of "Eating Out" in Aizawl. However, it is confined only to the affluent social group. Therefore, the modern restaurants have created to some extent a public culture.
Northeast Culinary Space in Delhi: Food as Place-making and Cultural Politics
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kadiguang Panmei
For various reasons, a sizeable number from Northeast India migrate to the metros in search of employment, education, settlement, and hence become migrants. Through this migration, they often abandon familiar settings and face complications in maintaining their culinary habits and culture. “Home is where your food is.” Many people associate the foods from their culture with warm, good feelings and memories. Food thus becomes particularly important for the northeast migrants living in the metros as food is usually the last cultural artefact that people shed and is a quotidian affair, evoking memories, and longing for home. The research looks into the process of migrant place-making and cultural exchange through the developing culture of northeast ethnic food in Delhi. It studies the intersection of food, community, nostalgia and cultural relations through this developing ethnic northeast foodscape in the urban village of Humayunpur, Delhi. It shows how the process of place-making through food adopted by northeast migrants is a strategic response to the alienation and indifference experienced by them as intra-national migrants, helping them formulate their identities, sustain their communities, provide comfort and a sense of security, and facilitate social relations and engagement with the receiving society on their terms. It shows how northeast migrants reflexively use food as a tool to negate, negotiate, navigate, and symbolically assert their identity as a collective far from home, highlighting how politics of identification, differentiation and incorporation function in the city through this foodscape.
Relating Eating Out and Obesity in Malaysia: Insights from a Sociological Perspective
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Elise Mognard
The prevalence of obesity in the adult Malaysian adult population is rising rapidly, and the Malaysian eating pattern is characterized by very pronounced outside of home food consumption. Drawing upon a sociological approach, this paper aims at 1) questioning the common assumption that a high frequency of eating out leads to increase of the Body Mass Index (BMI), and 2) deciphering eating out implications on eating patterns. Data analysed in this paper have been collected from a nationally representative sample by a survey focusing on the social and cultural determinants of food habits - the Malaysian Food Barometer. The overall contribution of this paper is three-fold. First, it contributes to clear the conceptual and methodological blur related to eating out. Then, it demonstrates a negative relationship between the proportion of intakes eaten out of home and BMI as well as a moderating effect of gender. Finally, some interpretations of this and recommendations for future research based on a sociological perspective of eating out as a public eating setting are suggested.
