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Taste Tests: Pizza and the Gastropolitical Laboratory in Mumbai

Publication ,  Journal Article
Solomon, H
Published in: Ethnos
January 1, 2014

This article is about experiments in taste. Focused on the cultural politics of pizza in Mumbai, it highlights the visceral work required to naturalize consumer choice as a catalyst of social futures in contemporary India. It emerges out of interviews and observations among food marketers and among customers and workers in a pizza restaurant. Guided by the concept of 'experimentality' elaborated in medical anthropology and science and technology studies, the article reframes definitions of food in experimental terms through two ethnographic registers. The first narrative focuses on the marketing of pizza, and explains how marketers turned their restaurants into laboratories of cosmopolitan cultivation. The second narrative shows how laboring bodies become enrolled in that laboratory, as young adults recruited from low-income neighborhoods come to work at a pizza restaurant. Such experiments blur the lines between evidence and enjoyment, and ultimately add up to a revaluation of public eating itself. © 2013 Taylor & Francis.

Duke Scholars

Published In

Ethnos

DOI

EISSN

1469-588X

ISSN

0014-1844

Publication Date

January 1, 2014

Volume

79

Issue

1

Start / End Page

19 / 40

Related Subject Headings

  • Anthropology
  • 4404 Development studies
  • 4401 Anthropology
  • 1601 Anthropology
 

Citation

APA
Chicago
ICMJE
MLA
NLM
Solomon, H. (2014). Taste Tests: Pizza and the Gastropolitical Laboratory in Mumbai. Ethnos, 79(1), 19–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2012.751928
Solomon, H. “Taste Tests: Pizza and the Gastropolitical Laboratory in Mumbai.” Ethnos 79, no. 1 (January 1, 2014): 19–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2012.751928.
Solomon H. Taste Tests: Pizza and the Gastropolitical Laboratory in Mumbai. Ethnos. 2014 Jan 1;79(1):19–40.
Solomon, H. “Taste Tests: Pizza and the Gastropolitical Laboratory in Mumbai.” Ethnos, vol. 79, no. 1, Jan. 2014, pp. 19–40. Scopus, doi:10.1080/00141844.2012.751928.
Solomon H. Taste Tests: Pizza and the Gastropolitical Laboratory in Mumbai. Ethnos. 2014 Jan 1;79(1):19–40.

Published In

Ethnos

DOI

EISSN

1469-588X

ISSN

0014-1844

Publication Date

January 1, 2014

Volume

79

Issue

1

Start / End Page

19 / 40

Related Subject Headings

  • Anthropology
  • 4404 Development studies
  • 4401 Anthropology
  • 1601 Anthropology