Papers by Hayden S . Kantor
Anthropology of Work Review, 2020
Ethnographic fieldwork in Bihar, India, reveals paradoxes at the core of contemporary agriculture... more Ethnographic fieldwork in Bihar, India, reveals paradoxes at the core of contemporary agriculture. Rural people view growing their own food as a crucial bulwark against the vicissitudes of the market but prioritize off‐farm employment to meet rising household expenses. Landowners who cultivate crops often refer to themselves as unemployed while complaining about a lack of laborers to work the land. They do not always refer to themselves as farmers, while many people who do not call themselves farmers nevertheless perform farm work and rely on agriculture as a livelihood. These paradoxes point to the fuzziness and incoherence surrounding the term “farmer” as both an identity and analytical concept. Ideologies of agricultural labor are shaped by different subject positions and social categories, such as caste, gender, and age. The fractured, fluid, and contingent nature of agriculture, in which people move between different locations and identities, provides the grounds for problematizing scholarly categories of agricultural labor—categories like farmer, landlord, peasant, sharecropper, and laborer. The on‐the‐ground realities of agriculture necessitate reframing the conceptual language to attend to the specificity and materiality of labor in particular sites and moments while also foregrounding the ambivalence, vulnerability, and incompleteness that inheres in agricultural labor.
Food, Culture & Society, 2019
In Bihar, India, rural people conceptualize the body through a humoral framework and strive to re... more 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.
American Anthropologist, 2018
The anthropology of urban migration in South Asia has emphasized the plight of marginalized peopl... more The anthropology of urban migration in South Asia has emphasized the plight of marginalized people and conflicts over public space. But the precarity of agriculture and inadequacy of basic state services has increasingly compelled rural middle-class families in Bihar, India, to establish a foothold in the country's booming cities. Because they aim to remain located in both the urban and rural spheres, urban migration reconfigures kinship relations so that the joint family household becomes a non-cohabitating entity. Constructing a house in the city depends on rural consumption practices that are distinct from the individual-oriented consumerism of the urban middle class. The gr̥h praveś, the Hindu house consecration ceremony and feast, legitimizes this transition. The hosts negotiate their hybrid identity as urban migrants through the event's food practices. For instance , adulteration scandals have prompted concerns about provisioning milk in the city. The consumption of milk-based specialty foods during the gr̥h praveś reflects the family's effort to deploy nourishing, familiar foods that reassert ties to their village community while also signaling aspirations to prosperity and a modern, cosmopolitan identity. Moments of ritual excess extend overflowing hospitality to guests human and divine, providing material proof of the family's unity and ambitions.
South Asian History and Culture, 2016
In the years following India's independence, food shortages threatened to destabilize the country... more In the years following India's independence, food shortages threatened to destabilize the country. In response, the Indian Ministry of Food in 1950 introduced the Food Economy and Guest Control Order. This statute was designed to check waste by limiting the number of guests permitted at social gatherings and regulating the types of food items served. The Guest Control Order quickly became a flashpoint between the bureaucrats in Delhi who conceived of the austerity measures and their counterparts in state capitals tasked with implementing the policy. This article examines the correspondence between the Ministry of Food and the Bihar Supply and Price Control Department regarding the Guest Control Order for insight into early debates about the appropriate role of the state in the economy. The exchange reveals the conflicting priorities – e.g. national objectives versus local exigencies, social cohesion versus enforceability – that characterized state policy in the early years of independent India. In these debates, assumptions about Indian culture, in general, and food practices, in particular – e.g. what is good for citizens to eat, how these foods ought to be eaten – became contested in the lawmaking process and emerged as central to the process of early nation-making.
Book Reviews by Hayden S . Kantor
Global Food History, 2020
American Ethnologist, 2018
Review of Metabolic Living: Food, Fat, and the Absorption of Illness in India by Harris Solomon
The Book Review, 2013
Review of Shadow Space: Suicides and the Predicament of Rural India by A. R. Vasavi
Journal of Development Studies, 2012
Review of Shorelines: Space and Rights in South India by Ajantha Subramanian
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Papers by Hayden S . Kantor
Book Reviews by Hayden S . Kantor