Article ID: CBB936401158

Clarified Commodities: Managing Ghee in Interwar India (October 2019)

unapi

Berger, Rachel (Author)


Technology and Culture
Volume: 60
Issue: 4
Pages: 1004-1026


Publication Date: October 2019
Edition Details: Special Issue: History of technology and South Asia
Language: English

This article explores genealogies of food, taste, nutrition and questions of governance through attempts to regulate the production and sale of vanaspati ghee in interwar India. It explores the "ghee wars" of 1927–29, when Punjab Province pushed to regulate the production of ghee alternatives so as to ensure the quality of the products on offer and regulate the trade in mass-produced food commodities. The possibility of a regulatory system brought to the fore a series of questions about the role of the Raj and the power of provincial legislatures as interwar structures of governance in India took hold: what was the responsibility of the provincial government to its citizens? Could taste and desire be gauged in rational terms? Could authenticity and fraudulence be measured? Finally, could food be governed? This article uses these questions to examine the unusual debates about clarified butter, its forgeries, and the context of interwar citizenship.

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Includes Series Articles

Article Venkat, Bharat Jayram (October 2019) A Vital Mediation: The Sanatorium, before and after Antibiotics. Technology and Culture (pp. 979-1003). unapi

Article Prasad, Amit (October 2019) Burdens of the Scientific Revolution: Euro/West-Centrism, Black Boxed Machines, and the (Post) Colonial Present. Technology and Culture (pp. 1059-1082). unapi

Included in

Article Mukharji (October 2019) Akarnan: The Stethoscope and Making of Modern Ayurveda, Bengal, c. 1894–1952. Technology and Culture (pp. 953-978). unapi

Article Kumar, Prakash (October 2019) "A Big Machine Not Working Properly": Elite Narratives of India's Community Projects, 1952–58. Technology and Culture (pp. 1027-1058). unapi

Article Kumar, Prakash (October 2019) Introduction to Special Issue of T&C: History of Technology and South Asia. Technology and Culture (pp. 933-952). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB936401158/

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Authors & Contributors
Leonie Dendler
Valentin Thomas
Goodman, Sam
Pandey, Poonam
Yellum, Iris
Gaby-Fleur Böl
Concepts
Regulation
Colonialism
Governance
Technoscience; science and technology studies
Agriculture
Food and foods
Time Periods
20th century
21st century
19th century
Modern
18th century
Places
India
British India (British Raj)
South Asia
Gambia
Gabon
West Africa
Institutions
Congress for Cultural Freedom
European Commission
United States. Food and Drug Administration
United States. Central Intelligence Agency
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