CALL FOR BOOK CHAPTERS

Spiced Histories: Cartographing Food, Culture, and Conflict in South Asia

Food is never just about sustenance. It is a charged cultural text, a site of memory and mourning, a marker of identity, a terrain of negotiation, and often, a weapon of exclusion or resistance. In South Asia—a region defined by deep pluralities, histories of colonialism, persistent socio-economic inequalities, and enduring spiritual traditions—food emerges not merely as a necessity, but as a powerful index of social structure, affective life, and ideological formation.

This edited volume, Spiced Histories: Cartographing Food, Culture, and Conflict in South Asia, seeks to bring together interdisciplinary scholarship that engages with food as a critical entry point into the study of identity, power, gender, sexuality, ideology, and resistance across South Asian contexts. Through this volume, we aim to explore how food mediates and is mediated by structures of caste, religion, gender, sexuality, coloniality, nationalism, and neoliberalism—interrogating not just what South Asians eat, but how, when, why, and with whom.

1. Food and Cultural Studies: Representations and Everyday Practices

Food is widely perceived as instrumental to the cultural imagination. In South Asia, culinary practices are deeply enmeshed with rituals, festivals, cinema, literature, and the politics of language, and region. The symbolic weight of biryani in communal politics, the cinematic trope of mothers cooking for sons in Bollywood, or the persistence of "authenticity" in regional cuisines—all point to the role of food in shaping cultural discourse.

We invite contributions that examine:

• Representations of food in South Asian literature, cinema, and media.
• Culinary practices as acts of cultural preservation or transformation.
• Street food cultures and urban imaginaries.
• The politics of culinary "authenticity" and regionalism.
• Diasporic cuisines and the affective economies of memory and longing.

2. Food, Gender, and the Politics of Reproduction

Gendered labor and bodily expectations are often regulated and reproduced through food practices. In South Asian households, women are frequently the bearers of culinary knowledge, yet their labor remains devalued and invisibilized. Food is also a site of bodily control, dietary discipline, and moral policing—particularly in relation to femininity and reproductive norms.

This section encourages scholarship on:

• Gendered divisions of food labor in domestic and professional kitchens.
• Culinary transmission as a mode of maternal or feminine legacy.
• Eating disorders, body image, and diet culture in South Asian contexts.
• Caste, gender, and kitchen hierarchies.
• Intersections of food taboos, menstruation, and purity.

3. Food, Sexuality, and Queer Ecologies

Food and sexuality are both domains of sensual experience and social regulation. In the South Asian context, where queerness is often negotiated under the shadow of state surveillance, familial obligations, and cultural taboos, food emerges as a quiet language of intimacy, defiance, and care. Recent queer ethnographies and culinary memoirs have begun to explore how non-normative desires intersect with everyday acts of cooking and eating.

Chapters in this thematic strand may address:

• Food as metaphor and medium in queer life writing and cultural production.
• Queer kinship and shared meals.
• The politics of vegetarianism, desire, and bodily control.
• Intersections of food, pleasure, and queer temporality.
• Culinary care work in queer and trans communities.

4. Ideologies of Food: Religion, Nation, and the State

Food practices in South Asia are deeply influenced by cultural, religious, and political forces. Whether it's dietary customs shaped by religious beliefs or the role of the state in regulating food access, what people eat—and how it's produced, distributed, and consumed—often reflects broader societal values and power structures.

Contributors may consider exploring topics such as:

• The intersections of caste, purity, and dietary norms
• Food bans, public discourse, and the regulation of consumption
• Religious observance and its influence on food practices (e.g., halal, sattvic, langar)
• Economic reform, food security, and shifting market dynamics
• State involvement in food rationing and distribution policies

Scope and Format

This volume invites contributions from a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, gender studies, cultural studies, media studies, sociology, religious studies, history, and literary studies. We welcome theoretical, empirical, historical, and practice-based approaches. While India is undoubtedly central to many South Asian discourses and will be represented in the volume, we are particularly interested in studies that explore regions beyond India—such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, the Maldives, and Afghanistan—as well as the South Asian diasporas.

We aim to highlight the diversity and complexity of food cultures, practices, and politics across South Asia as a region, rather than centering any one national narrative.

The volume will be organized thematically, with each section comprising approximately four (5 at max) chapters.

Please note that this format is currently tentative.

Important Dates and Submission:

We invite Abstract of around 250 words by June 28, 2025. Please send your Abstracts and any queries to spicedhistories@gmail.com with subject line Submissions-Spiced Histories.

Please note that only Acceptance email will be sent.

Publisher:

We are in talks with Peter Lang for a potential collaboration as a part of their ongoing series Food and Cultures from the Global South.