Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food, and South Asia

10. From Curry Mahals to Chaat Cafés: Spatialities of the South Asian Culinary Landscape

196 Ten From Curry Mahals to Chaat Cafés Spatialities of the South Asian Culinary Landscape Arijit Sen Ethnic restaurants and grocery stores play an important role in the creation of contemporary American urban culture. Difference, both symbolic and real, is expressed through cuisine and culinary practices in these sites. Increasingly such spaces are emerging in neighborhoods impacted by demographic, economic, and political restructuring and urban revitalization in American cities. Hole-in-the-wall eating spots, gourmet ghettos, and foodie places have become part of our urban experience. Various social stakeholders —what Nancy Fraser would call multiple publics (Fraser 1992)— interact and meet in these places making these locations part of a larger public realm where ethnic worlds intersect mainstream landscapes, and global culture is articulated in local forms. Sharon Zukin argues that such spaces serving global cuisine are sites where power, politics, and social and cultural hierarchies are made physical through architecture (Zukin 1995). Valle and Torres (describing Mexican restaurants in Los Angeles) argue that ethnic restaurants provide a critical infrastructure of conspicuous consumption and manufacture “the edible multicultural texts and symbols upon which a global city’s pluralistic self image is constructed” (2000: 69). In these discussions one finds a common refrain that ethnic culinary spaces in urban America cannot be read as part of a landscape that is segregated, circumscribed , and distinct from mainstream. Rather these are sites of hybridity and cultural contact where multiple worlds, networks, processes, and agents interact with each other. These spaces, indeed, are contemporary multicultural public spaces. In this chapter I will examine a South Asian Indian ethnic grocery store and fast-food restaurant called Vik’s Distributors (henceforth Vik’s) in the city of Berkeley. The following discussion will argue for a method of From Curry Mahals to Chaat Cafés • 197 analysis that puts the material and symbolic processes of producing place as the primary analytic focus. Ethnicity is creatively reproduced during everyday life and social interactions between various individuals and groups (Barth 1969; Conzen, Gerber, Morawska, Pozzetta, & Vecoli 1992; Gans 1996; Sollors 1989; Stern & Cicala 1991; Waters 1990). The production of ethnic places involves an interactive and performative process during which various individuals and groups actively negotiate social boundaries (C.T. Sen 2009; Goffman 1959; Brubaker, Feischmidt, Fox, & Grancea 2006). A large part of my argument comes out of the theoretical position of scholars of interactionalism (Goffman 1973; Brubaker et al. 2006). Rogers Brubaker explains the performative production of culture and identity among ethnic groups can “best be understood if studied from below as well as from above, in microanalytic as well as macroanalytic perspective” (2006: xiv). He argues that if we only examine rhetorical production of ethnicity and culture at a macro level we encounter an illusion that erases beliefs, desires, hopes, and interests of ordinary people on the ground. Erving Goffman, in his work on behavior in social institutions, demonstrated how sociospatial boundaries sustain human interactions during everyday life. Front and back territories help maintain boundaries between multiple domains such as inside/outside, private/public, informal/formal, and community/civic. Places are like stages, encouraging interactive performances from users. In addition, this chapter argues that in order to understand contemporary public places we need to understand the multiple forms of spatial behaviors that frame the experience of these sites (Bhabha 1994; Clifford 1997; Gupta & Ferguson 1992). In geographical literature one hears the term “spatialities” to explain the myriad perceptions, character, and lived experiences of the world around us (Bhaba 1994; Clifford 1997; Gupta & Ferguson 1992). This chapter ends with a discussion on the need to study multiple spatialities in order to understand contemporary ethnic food landscapes. Dolores Hayden’s and Setha Low’s analyses of how identity is produced during concrete everyday activities and human interaction in specific places documents methods of analyzing spatiality (Hayden 1995; Low 2000). During such practices, architectural locations are imbued with meanings and memories, a process Hayden calls the production of place. Many such “places”—like the one described in this chapter—are not built by immigrants . Rather, place making refers to a process by which meaning, identity, and memories are attached to a place, even if these places were originally built by others. 198 • Cities, Middle Classes, Public Cultures Places can be read as evidence of human culture. Material culture scholars such as Bernard Herman have shown that buildings, objects, and landscapes can serve as valuable evidence to read...