Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Dhaka and London, this paper focuses on the aesthetics of normal food as integral to Bangladeshi national and trans-national configurations of belonging and not-belonging.

Paper long abstract

Food plays a prominent role in variegated trajectories of imagining Bangladesh. It figures in visual art, music, religious rituals, as well as literary tropes, development discourses, and the political economy of hunger. This paper focuses on the aesthetics of normal food in imagining Bangladesh. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Dhaka and London, it examines the practices of preparation, presentation, and consumption of such food. It highlights the networks of trust and risk in which these practices are embedded. In so doing, it illuminates the collaborative character of the aesthetics of food as integral to Bangladeshi national and trans-national configurations of belonging and not-belonging.