Posts Tagged 'Darfur'

Eating and Belonging: a Conversation

So, I met this girl… on the internet.

No, that doesn’t really capture it. To begin with, she’s a woman, not a girl. A really, really smart one.

More to the point, we met quite by accident, not on JDate or ashleymadison.com. It seems we both live in, and blog about Pondicherry. And we are both a little food-obsessed. So we started corresponding about these things.

Deepa Reddy is a cultural anthropologist by profession, an artist by natural talent and temperament, and a cook by passion. Her blog, Pâticheri, is a thing of beauty, thoughtfulness, and deliciousness. During one of our exchanges — about the semiotics of baking or some such thing — she suggested that it might be fun to take our “ethnographic free-play” public, to post our back-and-forth on our blogs in real-time. With you, Dear Reader, adding your own “deep play” (I promise, that will be my one-and-only cultural anthropology joke) in the comments, this might just be an interesting experiment.

After loosely settling on a topic — national identity and all-things-food — we have decided to let it rip. Let the wild rumpus begin!

MBJ

The Conversation Thread
1. So American! (Deepa) 15 July 2012
2. You Are Having One American Nature Only, I Am Telling (MBJ) 16 July 2012
3. Cosmopolitan Comforts (Deepa) 20 July 2012
4. No Accounting for Taste (MBJ) 24 July 2012
5. What a Mess! (Deepa) 10 August 2012
6. Tell Me What You Eat and I Will Tell You Who You Are (MBJ) 21 August 2012
Reader Comments…

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Flames of Hope

Woman carrying firewood in North Darfur Fuel Efficient Cookstove, Darfur Prototype

What a nice surprise to see that the current issue of Newsweek magazine (July 16, 2007 issue) carries a very nice story on the Ashok Gadgil’s Berkeley National Laboratory Darfur Cookstove Project, entitled “Flames of Hope.”

Yoo-Mi and I had the privilege to work in Darfur, Sudan in November and December of 2005 as part of Ashok’s four-person team doing the initial field research which would enable us to design a fuel efficient cookstove for Darfurians living in the refugee camps. Ashok and LBNL scientist Christie Galitsky conducted the research in the camps of South Darfur; Yoo-Mi and I did the same in the North Darfur camps.

Continue reading ‘Flames of Hope’

Dung Flies

You gotta love Oxfam.

And when you gotta go, you gotta go.

And by slightly lopsided syllogism –- although no more warped than anything else in the nearly surreal world of North Darfur – when you gotta go, you gotta love Oxfam!

Continue reading ‘Dung Flies’

Blasts from the Past

... because the idiocy of manliness is an evergreen topic.

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... because Canada and the US will celebrate their Thanksgiving holidays and, regrettably and preventably, not 1-cook-in-10 will serve a decent turkey.

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... because everyday is Mother's Day.

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... because the American Dream seems but a distant memory, given the country's dominant ethos of small-mindedness.

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... to remind us that not every mix of Tibetans and Western spiritual seekers has to be nauseating.

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... to celebrate the new edition of Infinite Vision published in India.

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... reprised because military strategy seems more cruel and less effective than ever -- and certainly there is a better way.

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... because cars are ruining Pondicherry, where I live. How badly are they fucking up your Indian town?

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... reprinted because more-and-more people seem want to understand the gift economy. (Yeah!)

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