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Ethnos
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'India Shopping': Indian Grocery Stores and Transnational Configurations of Belonging
Purnima Mankekar
To cite this article: Purnima Mankekar (2002) 'India Shopping': Indian Grocery Stores and Transnational Configurations of Belonging, Ethnos, 67:1, 75-97, DOI: 10.1080/00141840220122968
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Published online: 02 Dec 2010.
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7 5India Sh opping
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‘India Shopping’: Indian Grocery Stores and Transnational Configurations of Belonging
Purnima Mankekar Stanford University, USA
abstract How do representations of ‘India’ shape the lives of members of a diasporic community, the identities they forge, and the politics they negotiate? This paper examines how grocery stores in the San Francisco Bay Area enable the constructio n of India and Indian culture, and argues that (1) Indian grocery stores in the diaspora form a crucial node in the transnational circulation of texts, images, and commodities between India and the diaspora; (2) the objects sold in these stores create varying regimes of value in different contexts; (3) gender (as it intersects with class and race) offers an important lens to examine the kinds of social practices facilitated by these stores. Throughout, the author wishes to foreground the on-going and contested construction of a transnational set of images, discourses, and institutions that engender what different people mean by ‘India.’
keywords Consumption, diaspora, transnational processes, public culture, objects
T his paper is a fragment o f a larger ethnographic pro jec t titled ‘India Travels,’ w hic h exam ines the transnational c irc ulation of public c ul- tures — as embodied in texts, images, and c o mmodities — betw een
India and the u.s.1 In this pro jec t, I trace how some of the c onflicts and co n- testatio ns abo ut c ulture oc c urring in the Indian subc o ntinent — so me of the c ulture w ars about w ho gets to define the natio n and shape natio nal c ulture — might or might no t trav el to the diaspora. In a diaspo ric c o ntext, w hat, for instanc e, is the differenc e betw een the c onc eptio ns of Sikhs and Hindus of their resp ec tiv e homelands, and how do these so metimes antago nistic c o n- c eptio ns shape their relationship w ith India? Ho w do representations of ‘In- dia’ shape the lives o f men, w o men, and y outh in the diaspora, the c ommu- nities they create, and the politic s they negotiate? Follo wing Arjun Appadurai, I w ish to ap propriate ‘India’ as an optic rather than as ‘a reified soc ial fac t o r
© Routledge Journals, Taylo r and Francis Ltd, o n behalf of the Natio nal Museum o f Ethnography iss n 001 4 -1 8 4 4 pr int/ iss n 1 4 6 9-5 8 8 x on line. do i: 1 0.1 08 0/001 4 1 8 4 02 2 01 2 2 9 68
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c rude nationalist reflex’ (1 996:1 8 ). Thro ugho ut, I w ish to foregro und the o n- go ing and c o ntested c onstruc tio n of a transnatio nal set of images, disc o urses, and institutio ns that engender w hat different peo ple mean by ‘India.’
In this paper, my primary objec tiv e is to examine ho w groc ery stores in the San Franc isco Bay Area enable the production and c onsumption of a range of texts, images, and c ommodities that partic ipate in this o ngoing c onstruc- tio n o f India and Indian c ulture. My analy sis is based o n the follow ing three propositions: (1 ) Indian groc ery stores in the diaspora fo rm a crucial node in the transnational c irc ulatio n of texts, images, and c o mmodities betw een In- dia and the diaspo ra; (2 ) the objec ts so ld in these stores c reate different re- gimes of value as they mov e fro m loc ation to loc ation; (3 ) gender (as it inter- sec ts w ith c lass and rac e) o ffers an impo rtant lens to examine the kinds of so c ial prac tic es fac ilitated by these stores. Rather than address eac h o f these propositions in turn, I w ill w eave them thro ugh my argument.
In a rev iew essay o n the ‘futures’ o f anthropology , Sherry Ortner po ints out that both the o bjec ts and our mo des o f anthropologic al enquiry hav e changed radic ally : ‘the field has c hanged irrev ersibly ’ (2 000:98 4, 990). Fo r sev eral y ears now , it has been ev ident that ethnographies o f loc al c ommuni- ties, identities, and spac es nec essarily inv olve an interro gation of how the ‘loc al’ is produc ed at the intersec tio n o f translo c al, regio nal, and global c ul- tural fields (Appadurai 1 996; Gupta & Ferguso n 1 997 a; Gup ta 1 998 ; Hannerz 1 996). Anthropologic al enquiry has been re -env isio ned in terms of effo rts to interrogate the c o njunc tio n o f plac e, sp ac e, and c ulture thro ugh a thoro ugh rethinking of the concept of culture (Appadurai 1 996; Gupta & Ferguson 1 997 b). As w e hav e rec o nfigured our perspec tiv es o n the objec ts and mo des o f o ur enquiry , w e hav e retho ught the pro cesses that co nstitute the texts w e pro- duc e: fro m exam ining the po etic s and po litic s o f ethnography to re-exam in- ing the relatio nship betw een ethnography and other mo des o f c ultural ana- lysis, for instance, literary texts, film and video, and journalism (Behar & Gordon 1 995 ; Cliffo rd & Marc us 1 98 6; Daniel & Pec k 1 996; Hannerz, this v olume). Furthermo re, fieldw o rk, so c entral to the produc tion of anthropo logic al data and theory, has also been rec onc eptualized in w ay s that lay bare the nexus betw een the production of anthropologic al know ledge and the political projec ts of c o lonialism, and the deterritorializatio ns and, indeed, reterrito rializations bro ught about in the w ake of international migrations, transnational mass media, and glo bal c apitalism (Gupta & Ferguso n 1 997 b). Th e anthropologi- c al analy sis o f transnatio nal proc esses presents fruitful challenges and o p- po rtunities to reinv igorate and reinv ent c o nv entional modes of anthropo-
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logic al enquiry. Again, some exc ellent mo dels exist: fro m study ing the pro- duc tion o f a transnational public sphere in spec ific parts o f the w orld (for instanc e, May fair Yang’s reseac h on Shanghai [1 997 ]) to c onduc ting w hat Geo rge Marc us (1 998 ) c alls multi-sited ethnographic research by fo llo w ing the movements of migrants and exiles (Roger Rouse 1 991 ; Louisa Schein 1 999) and trac ing the c irc uits o f transnatio nal c apital (Ong 1 999). In this paper I w ant to explore how trac ing the c ultural c onstitutio n of sp ac es and objec ts might enable us to do an ethnography o f transnationality. In so doing, I bring the c ritiques o f fieldw ork and ethnography cited abov e into c onversation w ith a long er histo ry o f study ing ob je c ts and c o m mo dities in anthro po logy.2
Conc retely, I am interested in how , in diasporic c ontexts, Indian groc ery stores are sites in w hich people and objec ts on the mo v e c o nv erge. As partic ular kinds o f so c ial sp ac es, these sto res enable us to study the rec onfiguration o f gender, c lass, and rac e in an interconnec ted w orld.
A Brief History of Indians in California I begin by situating the co nstitution of Indian c ommunities in the Bay Area
in a longer histo ry of immigration fro m Asia. As po inted out by Lisa Lo w e, ‘immigration has been a c ruc ial loc us through w hic h u.s. interests hav e re - c ruited and regulated both labor and c ap ital fro m Asia’ (1 996:7 ). In additio n to being sh aped by the u.s. ec o no my ’s changing needs for labo r and c ap ital, immigration po lic y is refrac ted by rac e and national origin. California o c c u- pies a distinc tiv e plac e in the history o f immigratio n fro m India. The start o f the tw entieth c entury w itnessed the migration of laborers fro m Punjab to Califo rnia and o ther parts of the West Coast (Leonard 1 992 ), and c o nstituted the first w av e o f immigrants from the South Asian subc ontinent. The Alien Land Law s of 1 91 3 , 1 92 0 and 1 92 3 c ast all Asians as ineligible fo r c itizenship, and the 1 91 7 Immigratio n Act explic itly exc luded Indians from naturaliza- tion. In 1 946, the Luc e-Cellar Bill repealed the ‘barred zone’ c lause o f the 1 91 7 Immigratio n Act. Th ereafter, betw een 1 946 and 1 965 , there w as an in- c rease in South Asian immigratio n into the u.s. The sec ond w av e o f South Asian immigration started after the 1 965 Immigration and Nationality Act: the entry of Indians in the u.s. ro se fro m 1 2 ,2 96 in 1 960 to 5 1 ,000 by the end o f 1 965 (Hing 1 993 :7 0, 7 2 ). By the 1 98 0s, there w ere abo ut 2 0 to 3 0,000 South Asians emigrating ev ery y ear (Khandelw al 1 995 ), and in 1 98 5 Indian immi- grants ranked third (at 2 8 ,498 ) behind Filipinos and Koreans. Acc ording to the 1 990 Census, Asian Indians c o nstituted 0.8 % of the to tal populatio n in the nine c ounties of the Bay Area, w ith 1 .3 % in the South Bay and 1 .0% in the
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East Bay. This data, how ev er, is outdated: it ac c ounts neither fo r the inc rease in the Indian po pulation in the Bay Area, nor fo r the substan tial numbers o f residents w ho arriv ed on h-1 b v isas in the last ten years.
H-1 b v isas are giv en to men and w o men that the Immigratio n and Natu- ralizatio n Serv ic e of the u.s. gov ernment (ins hereafter) c lassifies as highly- trained w orkers w ith skills that satisfy the prevailing needs of the us ec onomy. Fo r more than a dec ade now , a majority of h-1 b v isas hav e been giv en to c omputer programmers and softw are engineers from India, Taiw an, Ireland, Israel, and so on. Acc o rding to ins statistic s, in 1 999, 5 2 % of all h-1 b v isas w ere giv en to c o mputer-related professionals. h-1 b v isa-h o lders hav e play ed a piv otal role in the transformation of the ec onomic and c ultural landsc ape of Silic on Valley — ac c o rding to the San J ose Mercury News, abo ut 1 00,000 h- 1 b w orkers liv e in Northern California alone. Acc o rding to the ins, during the first half o f 1 999, 46% o f all c o mputer-related h-1 b w orkers c ame from India. A majo rity o f the h-1 b v isa holders are rec ruited direc tly fro m India by employment agenc ies that hire them out to c omputer companies. In the Valley , these agenc ies are know n as ‘body sh oppers.’
h-1 b visa-holders complicate our understanding of the relationship betw een c lass, labo r, and immigration. h-1 b visa-holders are a new breed of migrant w orker. Co mpanies usually sp onso r the h-1 b v isas of their employ ees. h-1 b v isa-h o lders are o ften c o ntrac ted to the body sho ppers w ho hire them to dif- ferent c o mpanies all ov er the u.s. Th ey are w ell paid by Indian standards, but c onsiderably less than u.s. c itizens and permanent residents (ac c ording to so me estimates, many o f them are paid about a third o f w hat u.s. c itizens and permanent residents make for the same tasks). Because their visas are the pro- perty o f their employ ers — w hether c omputer c o mpanies or bo dy-sho ppers — their legal status is alw ay s prec ario us, making it difficult fo r them to change jo bs, and o f c ourse there is no question of their unionizing or organizing o r ov ertly partic ipating in politic s. Most h-1 b visa holders seek to ev entually gain permanent residenc y in the u.s., and quite a few hav e been suc c essful in doing so. Furthermore, in times of ec o no mic c rises or ‘dow nturns,’ h-1 b v isa- ho lders bec ome extremely v ulnerable and are am o ng the first to be fired.
The c ase o f the h-1 b v isa-h o lders rev eals that, o nc e again, immigratio n po lic ies enac t and pro duc e a tiered hierarchy , sedimented not only by rac e but also by c lass, gender, and age: c ontrast, for instanc e, the urgenc y sur- ro unding c alls for raising the annual quo tas fo r h-1 b v isa-holders, w ith the stagnanc y and backlog in all other quotas, espec ially tho se pertaining to family reunific ation, so that parents, less w ealthy relativ es and the (generally female)
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spo uses o f residents no w hav e to w ait fo r y ears before gaining entry as legal residents. Immigration po lic ies artic ulate both the needs of the u.s. ec onomy for an ‘appropriate’ labor fo rce, and an imperativ e to restric t its inflo w so as to prev ent a so-c alled ‘exc ess’ of labo r supply (Low e 1 996:1 3 ). In an ec o no- mic c ontext marked by mixed production and flexible ac c umulatio n, rac e em- erges yet again not as a fixed singular essence but, as Lowe argues, ‘as the locus in w hich ec o nomic , gender, sex and rac e c ontradic tions c onverge’ (1 996:26). In general, the rac ial self-representatio n of Indians in the Bay Area is o ver- w helmingly shaped by c lass. While the number of Indians w o rking in blue c o llar oc c upations, the serv ic e industry , and in sm all businesses has inc reased substantially , the story of this c o mmunity is now frequently to ld in terms o f the dominant narrativ e of ‘Indian suc c ess’ in the Bay Area, most notably in Silic on Valley. Th e narrativ e of Indian suc c ess in Silic o n Valley — and this story is to ld largely in c ultural-nationalist terms — reinserts them into the dominant rac ial o rder; simultaneously and ironic ally , it c ontributes to the rac e -blindness on the part of a majority w ithin this c ommunity.3 It seems to me that the (relativ e) rac e-blindness of Indians in Silic on Valley is shaped by spec ific ally local po litic al-ec onomic and histo ric al fac to rs in that it might be much harder to sustain in, say, New Jersey or Queens, New York o r, fo r that matter, in o ther parts o f Califo rnia.
The c elebratio n of the (v aried) suc c esses of middle- and upper-c lass Indi- ans in Silic o n Valley must not blind us to the rac ial foundatio ns o f the u.s. ec o no my and the u.s. national imaginary. Bo nnie Ho nig c autio ns us that the my th of immigrant suc c ess rev eals the intimate relatio nship betw een xeno- philia and xenophobia:
The foreigners w hose immigrations to the United States daily reinstall the regime ’s mo st belov ed self-images are also looked on as threats to the regime. And this is no ac cident. Their admirable hard w ork and boundless ac quisition put ‘us’ out of jobs. Their voluntaristic embra ce of America reaffirms but also endangers ‘our’ w ay of life. The foreigner w ho shores up and reinv igorates the regimes also unset- tles it at the s ame time. Nationalist xenophilia tends to feed and (re)pro duce na- tionalist xenophobia as its p artner (1 9 98 :3 ).4
Ho nig’s bro ader point abo ut the dangers o f the myth o f the suc c essful immi- grant might giv e us pause as w e w itness the c elebratio n of the upw ard mo bil- ity of some Indians in the Bay Area and especially in Silic on Valley: first, because there is indeed something unsettling about the alway s-already foreigner w hose upw ard mo bility might leav e ‘us’ behind (the ‘us’ in Honig’s argument obv i- o usly refers to a normativ e European Americ an Self and no t to the fo reign
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Other). Mo re importantly , rather than foregro und or even ac kno w ledge the intersec tion of rac e and c lass in the regulation o f immigrant labo r, these rep- resentations of immigrant suc c ess have c ruc ial c onsequenc es for Indian Ame- ric ans’ o w n representations o f their c ommunity as predominantly middle- c lass or upper-c lass. Th ese representations render poo r and w orking-c lass Indians in Americ a v oic eless if not inv isible.
But for all their suc cess stories, to w hat extent are Indians in America deemed assimilable into the dominant rac ial and c ultural o rder? Rac e struggles are frequently portray ed as c ultural struggles o n the part of many Indian Ameri- c ans, w hose unassim ilability into the fabric o f dominant u.s. national c ulture allegedly reflec ts their rac ial unassimilability. The rac ial unassimilability o f Indians must, however, be situated in a larger ideological context of constructions of Asia and Asian c ulture in the dominant u.s. national imaginary. As sev eral Asian American scholars have argued, Asia, and Asians in America, have long represented the sp ac e of alterity against w hich dominant notio ns of c itizen- ship and belonging are c onstructed in the u.s. As Low e points out, ‘’Asia’ has al- w ay s been a c omplex site o n w hic h the manifold anxieties o f the u.s. natio n- state hav e been figured: such anxieties hav e figured Asian c ountries as ex- otic, barbaric, and alien...on the other hand, Asian immigrants are still a neces- sary racialized labor force w ithin the domestic national economy’ (1 996:4–5 ).5
This depic tion o f Asians seems partic ularly pertinent to the am biguo us and ambiv alent rac ializatio n o f (some) Indians in the Bay Area, w ho are portrayed as embody ing the quintessentially ‘Americ an’ v alues of c ap italist entrepre- neurship, ingenuity , and hard w o rk, and simultaneously , as alw ay s-already foreign bec ause o f their unassimilability into u.s. ‘national c ulture,’ and their rec alc itranc e to blending into the so-c alled melting pot. In w hat fo llo w s, I w ill examine how , in this po litic al and c ultural c ontext, Indian gro c ery stores might enable men and w omen of Indian origin to forge c ommunity and identity.
India Shopping I take my title, ‘India Shopping,’ from one of the store ow ners I interv iew ed
in c onnec tio n w ith this projec t. He said to me: ‘Oh , people don’t just c ome here to buy groc eries. They c ome for the w ho le package. Th ey c o me fo r India shopping.’ The ‘India’ that is produced and consumed in these stores is a highly c ontested c onstruc t; the kinds of affec t this ‘India’ aro uses range fro m fond no stalgia to am biv alenc e, sometimes even antago nism. I’m esp ec ially c on- c erned w ith ho w some of the c o mmo dities displayed and so ld in these gro- c ery sto res fac ilitate the produc tio n of the mo dality of the familiar w hich, in
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turn, reveals a c omplic ated set o f disc ourses abo ut natio n, c o mmunity , gen- der, and family. In o ther w ords, through the w ay s in w hich Indian groc ery stores pro duc e a sense of familiarity for their c ustomers, they pro v ide them not just w ith the sp ic es, lentils, and o ther ingredients deemed c ruc ial to In- dian c oo king, they also make available a range o f objec ts, artifac ts, images, and disc o urses for c o nsumption. Th e soc ial c o ntexts in w hic h the produc- tio n and c o nsumptio n o f ‘India’ oc c urs in these sto res is marked, amo ng other fac tors, by gender hierarchies, regio nal differenc es, and c lass differenc es.
While the stores I’m go ing to desc ribe primarily sell groc eries, they also sell o ther go ods impo rted from India — namely, c osmetic s, music , religio us ic ons and, in some c ases, c lothes and jew elry. Mo st o f them also rent v ideos and dvds o f films and telev isio n pro grams from the South Asian subc onti- nent. Th ese stores c ater to peo ple fro m all ov er the South Asian diaspo ra. It is important to remember that store ow ners are extremely sav v y abo ut the div erse ethnic and natio nal identities of their c ustomers and employ differ- ent marketing strategies to target immigrants fro m other nations in the South Asian subc o ntinent, inc luding Pakistan (in fac t, some o f them c all themselves Indo-Pak stores rather than Indian stores), and also the Caribb ean, East Af- ric a, and o ther parts o f the w o rld w here peo ple o f South Asian o rigin hav e liv ed. Furthermore, depending on their loc ations, these stores are trav ersed by sho ppers and bro w sers o f div erse national, rac ial, and c ultural affiliations, inc luding Euro pean Americ ans.6 These sto res perform different functions for the latter (from satisfying their c uriosity about their new and not-so-new neigh- bo rs, to enabling them to purc hase exo tic ‘ethnic Indian’ pro duc ts). Clearly , Indian gro c ery stores in the Bay Area are c omplex soc ial spaces, and the co m- modities and texts they display and sell are po ly v o c al in that they ev oke a range of respo nses for the men and w o men w ho patro nize them. In this pa- per, ho w ev er, I train my fo c us on the memories, longings, and often ambiv a- lent (if not c o ntradic tory) struc tures of feelings these sto res and the c om- modities and texts they display — w hat I hav e termed objec ts-in-motio n — ev o ke in men and w omen w ho hav e migrated fro m India.
How do groc ery sto res partic ipate in the c reation and c o nsumption o f disc ourses o f the ho meland fo r people o f Indian origin in the San Franc isc o Bay Area? As sites o f public c ulture, Indian groc ery stores enable us to trac k how , in Indian Americ a, ‘Culture’ is reified in terms o f loss o r fears of loss — something that has to be c onsc iously retained, produc ed, o r disav ow ed. Cul- ture, as Lo w e argues, ‘is the terrain thro ugh w hich the indiv idual sp eaks as a member of the c ontemporary national c ollec tiv ity , but c ulture is also a me -
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diatio n o f history, the site thro ugh w hich the past returns and is remembered, ho w ev er, fragmented, imperfec t o r disavo w ed. Thro ugh that remembering, that dec o mpositio n, new fo rms o f subjec tiv ity and c ommunity are tho ught and signified’ (1 996:x).
In w hat follow s, I reflec t on the c athexis o f highly c ontested pasts onto c ommo dities sold in Indian gro c ery sto res. In so doing, I argue fo r the impo r- tanc e of o bjec ts to so c ial life. I borrow from Baudrillard’s fo rmulatio n of o b- jec ts as representational sy stems in and of themselves (1 98 1 ). At the same time, I’d like to ho ld on to the materiality of objec ts by turning to the no tio n of objec tific atio n. Daniel Miller argues that ‘v alues and soc ial relatio ns are no t prio r to the c ultural fo rm they take, and therefore not reflec ted by them, but are c reated in the ac t by w hich c ultural fo rms c ome into being’ (1 995 b: 2 7 7 ). Miller terms this mutual entanglement of things, v alues, and soc ial re- latio ns o bjec tific ation. Co nsumption, therefore, is enmeshed w ith o bjec tifi- c atio n; as Miller po ints o ut, c o nsumption is ‘a use o f go ods and serv ic es in w hich the o bjec t o r ac tivity bec o mes simultaneo usly a prac tic e in the w o rld and a form in w hich we construc t our understandings of ourselves in the w orld’ (1 995 a:3 0). I, therefo re, appro priate the notion o f objec tific ation to problem- atize distinc tio ns betw een things, thought, and ac tion.
Sinc e things are inextricable from social life, I find it helpful to trace the tra- jec to ries of things-in-motion as they trav el fro m c o ntext to c ontext, and to trac k their ro le in meaning-making and in the regimes o f v alue they produc e and inc ite. As pointed out by Arjun Appadurai, the no tion o f regimes of v alue emphasizes that ac ts o f c ommo dity exc hange and c o nsumption do no t pre- suppose ‘a c o mplete c ultural sh aring o f assumptions, but rather that the de- gree of value coherenc e may be highly variable from situation to situation, and from c o mmo dity to c ommodity ’ (1 98 6:1 5 ). Regimes of v alue are inseparable from other domains of politics, for the consumption of c ommodities is alway s- already embedded in o ther soc ial and semio tic prac tic es. What sorts o f re- gimes of v alue are c reated by the c onsumptio n o f produc ts so ld in Indian gro c ery stores?
On the o ne hand, Indian groc ery sto res in the Bay Area mark the urban landsc ape w ith sp ec ific signifiers of ethnic ity and ‘Indian’ c ulture and, henc e, enable Indian c o mmunities to represent themselves both to themselves, and to the dominant c ommunity (it is no t surprising that, in so me u.s. c ities, the neighborho ods in w hic h these sto res are c o nc entrated are kno w n as ‘Little India’). They also pro v ide sp ac es w here Indians gather and exc hange impo r- tant info rmation about c ommunity events, and w here many new arriv als learn
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about neighbo rho ods, sc hools, and employ ment opportunities. This is w here some women might exchange recipes, obtain information about religious rituals and, in the stores that also sell c lothes, abo ut Indian fashions. Giv en the so- c ial spac es c reated by these stores, the c o mmodities they sell invo ke and pro- duc e po w erful disc ourses of ‘home,’ family , and tradition (Appadurai 1 98 6; Bo nus 1 997 ). I’m espec ially interested in examining ho w these sto res manu- fac ture variable no tio ns of the ho meland — w hat Salman Rushdie c alls imagi- nary ho melands — for some people from different parts o f India. I w ill do this by analy zing three aspec ts o f Indian groc ery stores: the relationship betw een foo d and diaspo ric memory; brand names and the ev o c ation o f no stalgia; the soc ial spac es c reated by the sto res.
Food and Diasporic Memory Parama Roy points to the intimate relationship betw een ‘gustato ry and
natio nal memories’ (n.d.:1 2 ), and the pow er of ‘nostalgic gastronomy’ (n.d.:1 8 ) in the semio tic s of foo d fo r diaspo ric and migrant subjec ts. Fo od ac quires a distinc tiv e v alenc e, and a distinc tiv ely gendered valenc e, in diasporic and mi- grant c ommunities. As markers of c ultural c ontinuity / differenc e, hy bridity , and/ or assimilatio n, the gastro no mic habits of diasporic subjec ts bec ome es- pec ially fraught areas for c ontestatio ns and nego tiatio ns of gender, c ommu- nity , and kinship. One informant po inted out the importanc e o f being able to buy ‘suitable’ ingredients so that she c ould c o ok Indian foo d for her husband and c hildren. As a busy pro fessio nal w o man, she gav e prio rity to c o oking Indian fo od bec ause, sh e said, this w as o ne w ay of maintaining her ‘c ulture’ abroad. ‘Language and food are tw o w ay s to retain our c ulture,’ sh e explained. ‘Now that the kids are in sc ho ol, they ’re forgetting their Gujarati. But the least I c an do is to giv e them o ne Indian meal a day.’ As Roy reminds us, ‘Food, in the migrant/diasporic subjec t’s cosmos, bec omes — w hatev er it might hav e been at its plac e o f putativ e o rigin — tenac io usly tethered to ec onomic s simultaneo usly and irreduc ibly natio nal and mo ral’ (n.d.:2 ).
Ano ther w o man spo ke to me abo ut ho w , w hen sh e first arriv ed in the u.s. fifteen years ago after marrying a man she didn’t know v ery well, cooking her husband’s fav orite Indian dishes helped ‘dev elop’ her marriage. She c o ntin- ued: ‘It helped me get to know him, his needs. And on weekends w e would go to gether to buy groc eries in Jac kson Heights [in New Yo rk, w here the c ouple lived at that point], and w e both looked forward to that.’ For both these w omen, and for sev eral o thers I hav e interv iew ed, c oo king Indian food w as integral to their roles in the family and to their c o nstitutio n as national and gendered
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subjec ts — indeed to their identities as Indian w omen.7 As dutiful wiv es and mothers, they believ ed they could keep their respective c ultures ‘aliv e’ through the fo od they c o oked, a task made infinitely easier and, in so me c ases, pleas- urable, by being able to buy the nec essary gro c eries at Indian sto res.
The relationship between food preparation and ideas of ‘suitable’ or dutiful womanhood is clearer w hen we hear what some w omen store-o w ners told me about their efforts to ‘teach’ younger and second-generation Indian American women how to cook Indian food. One woman store-owner in Berkeley recounted:
Very often, y oung w omen w ho’v e grow n up here come to my store because they are missing so mething their mo m used to cook. They describe it to me, and I tell them ho w they can make it in their ow n apartme nts. They do n’t know any thing about Indian cooking. But if y ou’re Indian o f course y ou’ll w ant Indian fo od [note how th e longing for Indian food is naturalized — or rather nationalized — here]. Sooner or later y ou’ll miss it. After all how long can y ou eat hamburgers. It is no t in our culture. And then they come to m e. I tell them w hat to buy , how to cook. What basic ingredients to alw ay s keep in their kitchen. I tell them ho w to use short-cuts so it’s no t necessarily w hat their mothers cook, because they don’t have the time to cook authentic recipes. But it is Indian food that can be made in America. I tell them w hat to do . It’s obv ious they ’v e nev er cooked before.
These w o rds bring to gether disc o urses o f foo d, gender, and c ulture in inter- esting w ay s. According to this store-o wner, second-generation women, marked as suc h by their appearanc e and their ac c ents, w ould ‘of c ourse’ w ant to eat Indian fo od bec ause, desp ite ho w they might look or so und, they are, after all, Indian. If, as Miller observ es, c o mmodities are ‘bro ught to life in the c on- sumption prac tic es o f the ho useho ld’ and ‘enac t moral, c osmo logic al and ideologic al o bjec tific ations,’ the pro duc ts o f gro c ery stores ‘c reate the im- ages by w hic h w e understand w ho w e hav e been, w ho w e are, and w ho w e might or should be in the future’ (1 995 a:3 5 ). Furthermore, ‘Indian food’ (c learly, the immense div ersity of the c ulinary traditio ns of the subc o ntinent is being c ollapsed here) enables the reproduc tion o f ‘c ulture’ in the diaspora. While the rec ipes these sto re -ow ners giv e to y oung Indian Americ an w o men might no t be ‘authentic ’ (to the extent that they entail impro v isation, sh ort-c uts, and the hy brid use o f ingredients) they are, nev ertheless, deemed ‘Indian’ o r at least are ‘Indian rec ipes’ that c an be made in the u.s.
No tw ithstanding this sh op-ow ner’s homogenizing of ‘Indian c ulture’ and ‘Indian foo d,’ most sto re ow ners w ere, in fac t, extremely know ledgeable about the div erse c ulinary habits o f their c usto mers. Th ey w ere all to o aw are that they had to c ater to a regionally and c ulturally hetero geneous c ommunity.
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Fo r instanc e, w hile earlier, mo st sto res only so ld ingredients used in No rth India, they no w made it a po int to o ffer produc ts used in southern Indian c uisines. Store-ow ners w ere proud of their nic he -marketing prac tices shaped, in turn, by their kno w ledge o f loc al demographic s and patterns o f settlement: as the ow ner of a chain that has branches in Berkeley and Sunny vale said to me, ‘I alw ay s keep gongura [an ingredient used in Andhra fo od], in my sto re in Sunny v ale bec ause there are lots o f Telugu-speaking peo ple there. In Ber- keley , there aren’t that many Telugus [sic ], so I don’t bother.’ Another sto re o w ner w ho c alled his business Indian Bazaar spo ke proudly o f selling ‘fo od fro m all o v er India.’ On the o ne hand, this is the story o f u.s. multic ulturalism meeting sav v y marketing;8 at the same time, it also expresses the nationalist ‘unity in div ersity ’ narrativ e promoted by the postc olonial Indian state.
Brand-name Nostalgia Certain c o mmodities so ld in Indian groc ery stores ev o ked a range of nos-
talgic emotions in some o f the men and w omen w ho c onsumed them. Fo r most o f these men and w omen, how ev er, no stalgia w as not just a simple, ro mantic longing for the past: it w as a c o mplex set o f emo tions sh ot through w ith ambivalenc e. Indeed, in some cases nostalgia entailed c ontradictory emo- tions, sometimes in the same indiv idual w ho w ould, at onc e, feel a sense of loss regarding c ertain elements o f the past, and a sense of relief of hav ing left that past behind. As Daphne Berdahl points o ut in her analy sis o f the nostal- gia surro unding c o mmo dities fro m the former German Demo c ratic Repub- lic , ‘In this sense, no stalgia is abo ut the produc tion of a present rather than the reproduc tio n o f a past’ (1 999:2 02 ).
Susan Stew art desc ribes no stalgic desire as arising from the ‘gap betw een resemblanc e and identity... nostalgia is enamo red of distanc e, not o f the ref- erent itself ’ (from Na� cy 1 993 :1 5 0). Some scholars of diaspo ra, such as Hamid Na� c y , define nostalgia as being about the desire to return to the ho meland (1 993 :1 48 ). Th is definition does not alw ay s hold true fo r Indian migrants in the San Franc isc o Bay Area. Many of those that I interview ed may or may not w ant to ac tually return to India, but felt no stalgic all the same. In their c ase, nostalgia w as not driv en by a desire to return to the ho meland, w hether it is their home-to w n, their state, or mo re generally (their c o nc eptio n of ) India.
Acc o rding to Bakhtin, c hronoto pes enable the interconnec tio n o f spatial and tempo ral relatio nships. For so me c usto mers, the c hro no to pe o f groc ery stores engendered a no stalgia that keeps aliv e an am biv alenc e tow ards the purported ‘homeland.’ As one informant put it, go ing into Indian sto res is
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like ‘go ing into a time w arp. It’s messy , it’s loud. It’s fun w hile y o u’re there. But y ou c an then return home to y o ur c lean and quiet ho use. Yo u don’t hav e to stay there [in the store].’ Nostalgia and memory also get transposed o r c athec ted o nto some of the pro duc ts sold in Indian gro c ery sto res (here I refer partic ularly to produc ts made in India). Acc o rding to so me sho p o w n- ers and their customers, mo st Indians go to these stores to buy the same brands that they used in India — popular brands suc h as Maggi Noo dles, Hamam so ap, Brahmi Amla hair oil, Gluc ose bisc uits, and Amul Butter. As one o f my informants, Sunita Gupta, w ho had been frequenting stores in Sunny vale for the past eight y ears, to ld me, using these brands ‘bro ught bac k memories o f ho me.’ Sunita is a thirty-something professional w ho w o rks in a Silic on Val- ley c ompany in the area. She sp oke of how she alw ay s reached fo r the same produc ts. She alw ay s bo ught Gluc o se bisc uits to hav e w ith her mo rning tea bec ause they reminded her o f early mo rnings in her parents’ house:
Ev ery morning, I w ould w aken to the sounds of tea being serv ed in our living ro om. My parents used to w ake up v ery early , go for a w alk, and then drink their tea w hen they returned. My father would sit w ith a p ile of new spapers, and my mother w ould sit beside him, serving tea. I w ould walk in bleary -ey ed , dip my Glucose biscuit into my tea, and sip it slow ly. As soon as I w as do ne, I w ould rush off to get ready for school. My mother w ould scold me every morning for daw dling ov er my tea; I w ould alway s hav e to eat my to ast o n my w ay to the bus stop. It w as a set ro utine: ev ery morning I w ould drink tea w ith them; my mom wo uld y ell at me; I w ould ignore her and sip my tea, my father and I smiling sly ly at each other. No matter w hat else hap pened, this happened ev ery single morning, every morning... Here, so far away , I still dip my Glucose biscuits into my tea. And I skip breakfast because I nev er hav e time to eat before I leav e.
Henc e, c ommodities may func tion as ‘c ultural mnemonic s’ (Na � c y 1 993 :1 5 2 ), enabling the pro duction and c o nsumption o f partic ular narratives o f the past, a past, ro oted as it w ere, in the shifting signifier that is the ho meland. Other w omen I met also desc ribed how partic ular brands o f pro duc ts ev o ked v ery sp ec ific memo ries of their c hildho od in India. Indira, w ho taught in a pri- mary school in Fremont, sp oke o f how sh e alw ay s bought Brahmi Hair Oil bec ause, every Sunday , her mother w ould o il her hair for her. Similarly , ev ery Diw ali — w hich is the Hindu New Year — she bo ught My so re Sandalw o od Soap bec ause that is w hat they used in her family on Diw ali. As she said, ‘You’re so far aw ay and y ou w ant links w ith tho se day s.’
As one of the sto re o w ners exclaimed to me: ‘There are three reaso ns w hy my c ustomers reach fo r the same brands they used in India: no stalgia, no s-
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talgia, no stalgia!’ Through the pro duc ts they sell, Indian stores enable the c athexis of different fragments of the past on to c o mmodities, enabling both the c o nsumption and (re)p ro duc tio n of ‘Indian c ulture’ in the diaspo ra. At the same time, it is impo rtant to remind o urselves, first, that obv iously these c o mmo dities do no t ev o ke no stalgia in all c ustomers; sec o nd, ev en am o ng those w ho no stalgic ally reac h fo r the same brand names that they c onsumed in India, the emo tions these c o mmodities ev okes are quite v aried.
Furthermore, no stalgia is predic ated o n a selec tiv e remembering and for- getting of the past (see also Berdahl 1 999:1 98 ). Thus, the c o nsumption of a partic ular c ommodity in the diaspo ra might lead an indiv idual to remember the w armth and laughter surrounding family gatherings and c elebrations in the homeland (rather than the c onflicts and family politic s surrounding them). I c am e ac ro ss sev eral instanc es o f this selec tiv e remembering and fo rgetting soaked in a no stalgia ev o ked by a favo rite brand (fo r instanc e, Maggi No od- les o r, as in the c ase abov e, Gluc o se Bisc uits), but o ne stands out partic ularly v ividly in my mind. I w as interv iew ing a middle -aged c ouple in their liv ing roo m about the role of Indian gro c ery stores in their liv es in the Bay Area, w hen the man started to speak of how a partic ular brand of basmati ric e brought bac k nostalgic memories of family c elebrations o f the Hindu festiv al Diw ali. As the man w ax ed ly ric ally abo ut the mo untains o f foo d prepared for the oc casion, the wife slyly remarked to me that Diw ali in her in-law s’ home meant that the w o men o f the family w o uld be ‘stuc k’ in the kitchen all day prepar- ing the grand meal. ‘No w ay am I go ing to do that here,’ she added. The gen- dered div ision of labo r surrounding fo od preparatio n in her in-law s’ home meant that she c ould no t share in her husband’s nostalgia, and selec tiv e re- membering, o f Diw ali c elebratio ns of the past.
Evidently , the nostalgia ev oked by fav orite brands of c o mmodities is nei- ther reflec tiv e nor c o nstitutiv e of any sort of c ollec tiv e memories or identifi- c ation on the part o f c usto mers o f Indian o rigin. In fac t, as in the c ase o f Ber- dahl’s informants, nostalgia c an ‘evo ke feelings o f longing, mo urning, resent- ment, anger, relief, redemptio n, and satisfa c tio n — o ften w ithin the same in- div iduals’ (1 999:2 03 ). Th ere are tw o additional c av eats I w o uld like to insert here. As I noted earlier, the meanings attached to products are obviously shaped by the c ontexts in w hich these c onsumptio n prac tic es o c c urred. Commodi- ties bought in India ac quire a different v alenc e w hen c o nsumed in the u.s. Thus, a fav orite shampoo w as simply a fav o rite shampo o w hen used in India; in the diaspo ra, how ev er, this sh ampoo ac quired partic ular v alue bec ause it ev o ked sp ec ific memo ries o f home and c hildhood. Sec ondly, I do not intend
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to paint a fuzzy, so ft-fo c used pic ture o f memo ries o f home or family that are unifo rmly pleasurable. Th ere are many fo r w hom these memo ries c an ev o ke so rrow o r fear. Indian groc ery sto res are no t just familiar, but for some deeply familial, w ith all the longing, ambiv alenc e, o r terror that the familial c an in- v oke. What resonanc es or memories might these sto res inv oke for tho se fo r w ho m the familial is not ev oc ativ e o f pleasure or sec urity ? Or w hen the ho me is no t a safe sp ac e?
Retailing the Familiar: The Social Spaces of Indian Grocery Stores As noted earlier, the anthropologic al study o f transnational proc esses has
proved challenging for prac titioners of ethnography. What does it mean to do an ethnography of transnationality? Ortner desc ribes ethnography thus: ‘Eth- no graphy o f c ourse means many things. Minimally , ho w ev er, it has alw ay s meant the attempt to understand another life w orld using the self — as muc h of it as po ssible — as the instrument o f know ing. Classic ally , this kind o f un- derstanding has been c losely linked w ith field w ork, in w hic h the w ho le self physic ally seeks to understand. Yet implic it in the rec ent disc ussio ns o f eth- no graphy is something I w ish to make explic it here: that the ethno graphic stanc e (as w e may c all it) is as muc h an intellec tual (and moral) positio nality, a c onstruc tive and interpretive mode, as it is a bodily proc ess in spac e and time’ (1 995 :1 7 3 ). In this sec tion, I w ill exam ine the sensory experienc e o f sh op- ping in these stores, and w ill trac e the kinds of affec t pro duc ed in these stores for some people of Indian origin in the Bay Area. In addition, I will analyze how Indian groc ery stores in the Bay Area create soc ial spac es in w hich people o f Indian origin might forge identity and c ommunity. As w e w ill see, these stores c reate spac es o f familiarity that are c o mforting fo r some sho ppers and that, for others, are fraught w ith c laustrophobia and c ommunity surv eillanc e. They are rich sites to observe the everyday practices, c ustoms and rules of social in- terac tion that exist among the Indian diaspora in the San Franc isc o Bay Area.
Let me begin by rec o unting my observ atio ns o f o ne suc h store. It had been eight years sinc e I’d last been in Spice Bazaar, an Indian grocery store in Sunny- v ale, a c o mmunity in Silic on Valley that is ho me to a large number of resi- dents from India. There had been many c hanges: from a dingy one ro om, c atering to Indian students and pro fessio nals in the area, it w as now a dingy three-roo m sto re. There w ere tables on the sidew alk display ing v egetables, and as I w alked past them, I c ould smell the tomatoes ripening all-too-rap- idly in the blazing July heat. Despite it being a w eekday afternoo n, the side- w alk was full of people, mostly women of different ages, buying produc e. From
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the w ay they w ere dressed, some w o men loo ked like they w ere making a stop there on lunc h break fro m their offic es.
But no t ev ery one here w as on break from their offic es. One elderly w oman in a w hite polyester sari, her w hite hair pulled back in a severe bun, w as go- ing thro ugh a huge bin of okra w ith metic ulo us c are. She w ould pick eac h o kra, and put it to the snap test: if it snapped under the pressure o f her fin- gers, she w ould grimac e and throw it bac k into the pile; tho se that surv iv ed the snap test w ere plac ed in a plastic bag. As I sto od taking in the sights and smells, I noticed a middle -aged co uple greeting a salw ar-kameez clad younger w oman w ith great enthusiasm : it w as o bv io us that they w ere friends and had not seen each other for a long time. When she saw the older c ouple, the younger w oman immediately draped her dupatta ov er her head and bent to to uch their feet in a traditional Hindu gesture o f show ing resp ec t to o ne’s elders: the older w oman embrac ed her and they started to exchange new s.
I rando mly pic ked the middle of the three doo rs leading into the store: it turned out to be the main entranc e. On one w all w ere pasted fly ers of all kinds. As I peered at them, I saw fly ers for nanny and housekeeping serv ic es, posters of upc o ming film c onc erts, adv ertisements fo r roo m-mates, and real estate notic es. Lining a sec o nd w all w ere shelves o f v ideotapes and dvd’s: the y oung w o man behind the c o unter w ith stacks o f registers, stared blankly bac k at me in respo nse to my somew hat timid smile. Intimidated and a bit self-c o nsc ious, I w alked o n: unlike my usual trips to Indian gro c ery stores, w hen I rushed in w ith a list o f things to pic k up, this time I w as determined to bro w se. Inside, the store w as ev en mo re c ro w ded than the sidew alk o ut- side. All the sp ic es w ere on a ro w o f shelves in one o f the roo ms, ly ing in w hat seemed to me to be utter disarray; lentils, ic o ns of Hindu go ds, and posters of Sikh gurus w ere plac ed together on ano ther shelf. There w as music blaring, and one w o man, w ho seemed to be the ow ner, glared balefully at her c usto mers as she rang in their purc hases: w ith a start I w as reminded o f the kind o f ‘c usto mer serv ic e’ I rec eiv ed in sto res in my ho meto w n, New Delhi.
It w as not just the ‘c ustomer serv ic e’ (suc h as it is) and the apparent disor- der that reminded me and sev eral of the people I interview ed o f shopping experienc es in India. Through the produc ts they offer, their sights and smells, Indian groc ery stores enac t the semio tic s o f the familiar in c omplex w ay s. The v isual c lutter is o nly one part of the senso ry stimuli they prov ide. The dominant impression most people I interview ed had of Indian stores w as their distinc tiv e sm ell. If to o ther c ommunities, these sto res represent sites of (o l- fac to ry) alterity , to many Indians w ho go to these sto res, they represented
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sp ac es of familiarity. To sev eral men and w o men I spo ke w ith, Indian gro- c ery sto res felt familiar in a fo reign land w here Indians are marked as alien by the sm ells w e embo dy. Varsha, a sec ond-generatio n Indian Americ an w oman, described her changing feelings tow ards the smells of Indian stores thus: ‘When I w as a kid, o ne of the things I hated w as y ou c am e o ut sm elling of sp ic es, sm elling of India. I used to say, Mom, w e c an’t go any w here afterw ards be - c ause w e smell like India. But later I started liking the smell, I liked that pun- gent sm ell.’ Another w o man pointed o ut to me, ‘Its not just the sm ell o f the sp ic es and the dals, it is the sm ell o f the press of people, of Indian bodies.’
There are other senso ry c ues that make Indian stores feel familiar. One w oman I spo ke w ith mentio ned that she made it a po int to go to Spic e Ba- zaar o n w eekends: ‘Its just like bazaars in India. Th ere is alw ay s music blar- ing in the bac kgro und; ev ery body talks loudly. If the o w ner w ants to check on the price of a partic ular pro duc t, sh e sho uts ac ross the sto re to so meo ne in the bac k to loo k it up. I alw ay s hav e a headache by the time I leav e. But it’s alw ay s fun. It’s no t like Safew ay or Walmart.’
In additio n to pro viding the familiar sounds o f Indian bazaar s, these stores prov ide o ther auditory links w ith the homeland through the music they sell. India Palace is a new chain of stores opened in Sunny vale and Milpitas (Milpitas is also part o f Silic on Valley and, like Sunny v ale, ho me to a v ery large Indian c ommunity ). India Palac e is famo us for its huge selec tion of music . I saw three long sh elves w ith c d’s and audio tapes, o f w hich tw o w ere lined w ith South Indian film and c lassic al (Carnatic ) music . On the to p of the shelves w ere signs dec laring ‘South Indian Music .’ Tap es and c d’s in different southern In- dian languages — Tam il, Malay alam, and Telugu — all lay mixed together in stac ks. I c ommented to the salesw oman at the c ounter that this w as a huge c ollec tio n o f music , did they get a lot o f c usto mers? Yes, she replied, ‘these South Indians’ lov e their music no matter w here they are. The store obv i- ously c atered to a large number o f people from the southern regions of India, their music s all lumped to gether under the homo genized c ategory ‘South Indian music .’ This display reinforced a sy stem o f c ategorization w hereby the music and, by extension, the diverse cultures of southern India were lumped together. Th is homogenizatio n emphasized the dominanc e of North Indian assumptions about a normativ e ‘Indian c ulture,’ and reflec ted some o f the explosiv e tensio ns and frac tures betw een regional and ethnic c o mmunities in India. The c onstruc tion of the familiar, in such cases, reinforces (and elides) the tensio ns and hierarc hies present in India around the shaping of a hege- mo nic natio nal c ulture.
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At the same time that these stores enable a c ruc ial link w ith their respec- tiv e ho melands thro ugh the c onstitutio n of spac es o f familiarity, not all o f these links are pleasurable o r nurturing — and gender seems to be a c ruc ial v ariable in this regard. Fo r some w o men, the soc ial spac e o f Indian groc ery stores represents an extension of the surv eillanc e exercised w ithin the c om- munity. Yo unger, sec o nd-generation w o men hav e frequently c ommented to me about how, w hen they ac company their parents to these stores, they are re- peatedly admonished fo r ‘immo dest’ or ‘loud’ behavior. As the nerv e-c enters o r, rather, as go ssip-c enters o f the c ommunity, these sto res are sp ac es w here some w omen are subjected to partic ularly gendered forms of surv eillanc e. Furthermore, as Seema, a c olleague in a domestic v iolence organization, point- ed out to me, in instanc es w here w o men’s mo bility is restric ted by their abu- siv e spo uses, they are ‘allow ed’ to go by themselves to Indian stores ev en w hen they are pro hibited from going to ‘regular’ stores, bec ause Indian sto res are deemed ‘safe’ by their husbands. On the o ne hand, the stores prov ide o pportunities for w o men w ho se mobility is otherw ise c urtailed. On the other hand, the v ery fac t that abusiv e men feel that their w iv es are unlikely to do any thing ‘inappro priate’ w hile in these sto res suggests that they also repre - sent an extension of patriarc hal c o ntrol: the sense of familiarity staged by these stores o bviously has a dark side as w ell.
Fo r example, o ne info rmant, Bindu Singh, sp oke o f ho w , ten years ago after her div o rce from her abusiv e husband, she w as stigmatized by the In- dian c o mmunity in Berkeley w here she then liv ed. She rec o unted that she had felt like an ‘outc ast’ and this sense of stigma w as mo st v iv id w hen sh e w ent groc ery shopping at the Indian sto res lining Univ ersity Avenue. ‘I felt ev ery body’s eyes w ere on me. May be I w as being parano id, but I’d w alk into a sto re and I knew ev ery body w as talking about me. Th e c ommunity in Ber- keley w as v ery sm all in those day s, and ev ery body knew w hat w as go ing o n in eac h other’s homes.’ But, she said, their attitude had changed rec ently. After her div o rce she had seen so me v ery hard y ears as a single parent to her tw o c hildren, but she had managed to train herself as a real estate agent and had achieved tremendous suc cess in her profession; furthermore, her children w ere now grow n up, w ith her son at Stanfo rd and her daughter at uc la. Hav ing bec o me w ealthy and pro v ided a ‘go od upbringing’ to her c hildren, she had earned the ac c eptanc e of her c o mmunity members. She said: ‘[Then] I ig- nored their stares and no w , w hen I go to their sto res or meet them so me - w here else, they are so nic e to me.’ ‘No w they w ant to ask me fo r adv ic e,’ sh e added sarc astic ally. Fro m being sp ac es o f surv eillanc e and c laustro phobia,
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these stores had bec ome sp ac es w here Bindu, w ith her independenc e and, mo re impo rtantly , her upw ard mobility (marked bo th by her suc c essful c a- reer and the fac t that her c hildren w ent to elite c o lleges), w as greeted w ith grudging respec t by her c ommunity members.
It sho uld c ome as no surprise to us that, at the same time that sh op ow n- ers insisted that they treat all their c usto mers equally , they and their emplo y- ees dev elop w ay s of identify ing the c lass positions o f their c usto mers. As o ne perso n to ld me, ‘Educ ated people, the pro fessio nals, behav e differently from taxi driv ers.’ Indeed, my partic ipant-observ atio n in stores in bo th Berkeley and Sunny v ale c o nfirmed that most sto re ow ners treated their w orking-c lass c ustomers differently. Some store ow ners c o mplained that w orking-c lass c us- tomers tended to haggle more; they also alleged that, in some c ases, they had to w atch these c usto mers and, in partic ular, their children c arefully be - c ause they w ere afraid they might sho p-lift. Th e o w ner of Indian Bazaar in Sunny vale c laimed, ‘We don’t hav e to do this w ith educ ated people.’ Henc e, the soc ial contexts in which the produc tion and c onsumption of ‘India’ occurs in these stores are marked by class differenc es, highlighting how c lass fissures c ommunities in the Bay Area. Class distinc tions also exist amo ng stores, so that some stores c onsider themselves more upper c lass than o thers. Finally, class distinctions exist w ithin stores as well, not just between ow ners and em- ployees but also, in the c ase of so-c alled family-ow ned stores, between owners and the rest of the family, espec ially poorer relatives w hose labor is exploited.9
Conclusion In this paper, I’v e argued that Indian groc ery stores form a c ruc ial node in
the transnational c irc ulation and c onsumptio n of c ommodities and disc ourses about India. I have been interested in exploring how these grocery stores, the objec ts-on-the-m ov e they display and sell, and the so c ial spac es they c reate, might enable us to do an ethno graphy of transnatio nality. I hav e attempted to demonstrate that, as sites o f public c ulture, Indian groc ery stores inv oke and produc e pow erful disc o urses of home, family, and c o mmunity — all of w hich are c ontested, and all of w hic h are gendered in important w ay s. The c ommo dities display ed and so ld in these sto res are deeply enmeshed in the so cial liv es and identities o f Indians in the Bay Area. Henc e, I hav e been parti- c ularly interested in the relationship betw een c ommo dities and the produc- tio n o f c ulture in the c o ntext of trav el. As I hav e been desc ribing, these sto res are important sites fo r the produc tion of ‘Indian c ulture’ outside India, fo rc- ing us to re -examine the relationship betw een culture and territory — especially
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territory as polic ed by nations and states — in an inc reasingly interconnec ted w orld.
A c ommo dity , as Baudrillard (1 981 ) and Appadurai tell us, is a ‘thoroughly soc ialized thing’ (Appadurai 1 98 6:6). Th e semiotics of c ommo dities in In- dian groc ery stores inv olve the pro duc tio n and c onsumptio n of disc ourses o f c ulture, family, c ommunity , natio n, and gender. It should be c lear that my analy sis of c o nsumption prac tic es is no t intended to suggest that c onsump- tion is either c ausativ e o r reflec tiv e of soc ial phenomena. Further, rather than dismiss it as the outc ome o f soc ial manipulatio n, it might help to c o nc eptu- alize the desire to c onsume as produc ed at the intersec tio n of a range o f so- c ial relatio ns and longings (Appadurai 1 98 6:2 9). Nor, as c rude theories of fetishizatio n o r manipulation imply , do c ommodities ‘hide’ reality as it ‘re - ally exists’ (as in the c onsumption equals false c onsc iousness model). For some migrants fro m India, Indian gro c ery stores, and the c o mmodities they dis- play and sell, engender a c o mplex set o f emo tions (ranging from no stalgia to am biv alenc e to open antagonism) refrac ted by the haunting presenc e o f the familiar — its loss, its absent presenc e and, in a few c ases, its attempted re - triev al — such that it is simultaneously erased and reinsc ribed through the daily prac tic es of subjec ts in diaspo ra. As w e hav e seen, ho w ev er, for many o f my info rmants, the familiar w as not alw ay s ev oc ativ e of pleasure or sec u- rity : in so me c ases, it w as redolent o f surv eillanc e o r c laustrophobia, and w as suffused w ith am biv alenc e, if no t outright resentment. It is useful, therefo re, to bear in mind the po ly v o c ality o f the c o mmodities displayed and so ld in these groc ery sto res. Indian gro c ery stores, the so c ial sp ac es they c reate, and the c ommo dities they display and sell inaugurate patterns o f soc iality that bo th extend and disrupt hierarchies o f v alue o riginating in the ‘ho meland,’ ev en as they pro duc e heterogeneo us relations o f pow er alo ng axes of gender, kinship, c o mmunity , and rac e in the diaspo ra.
Acknowledgments Financial assistanc e for some of the research done for this pap er w as prov ided by the So uth Asia Initiative, Stanford Univ ersity. This paper w as rev ised w hile I w as a Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Adv anced Studies, Harvar d Univ ersity : I gratefully ac know ledge the support, financial as w ell as intellectual, I w as prov ided there. I am thankful to a number of colleagues w ho hav e assisted my w ork on this paper. I w as assisted in my fieldw o rk for this project by Mamta Ahluw alia and Ritu Bhatnagar: I am grateful for their hard w ork, diligence, and insights into the Indian community in the Bay Area. Earlier v ersio ns of this paper w ere presented at sev eral fora: a conference on Gender and Co nsumption, organized by Inderpal Grew al and Caren Kaplan at the University of California ,
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Berkeley ; the Co mmunicatio n, Race, and Ethnicity co lloquium hosted by the Departme nt of Co mmunicatio n, Univ ersity of Madison, Wisconsin; the Radcliffe Institute Co lloquium Series at Harvard University ; the Vega Day symposium in hono r o f Sherry Ortner, conv ened by the Dep artment of Anthrop ology, Sto ck- holm Univ ersity and the National Museum of Ethnography , Stockholm; and a colloquium at the Departme nt of Anthropology, Harv ard University. At these v enues and others, I hav e benefited from feedback from Rita Nakashima Brock, Stev e Caton, Law rence Co hen, Gudrun Dahl, Cy nthia Enloe, Inderp al Grew al, Akhil Gupta, Ulf Hannerz, Lis a Hersbach, Michael Herzfeld, Eng-Seng Ho , Priy a Joshi, Caren Kap lan, Saba Mahmood, Don Moore, Kirin Naray an, Sherry Ort- ner, Wilhelm Östberg, Arv ind Rajagopal, Roger Rouse, Parama Roy , Francesca Saw ay a, Lo uisa Schein, Hemant Shah, Vicki Shulz, Mary Steedly , Cathy Sylber, Tim Tay lor, and Helena Wulff. Special thanks are due to Don Kulik, Akhil Gupta, Kamla Mankekar, and Wilhelm Östberg for their thoughtful readings and de - tailed comm ents at subsequent stages of finishing this paper.
Notes 1 . The larger p ro ject is based on ethnographic research conducted in tw o sites in
this transnational circuit, New Delhi and the San Francisco Bay Area. My choic e of New Delhi and the San Francisco Bay Area as fieldsites was shaped by intellectual and practical factors. My research in New Delhi builds o n p revious fieldw ork; the San Francisco Bay Area is of great historical significance to the history of In- dians in the u.s. because some of the earliest South Asian communities in No rth America w ere fo rmed here at the turn of century in rural California (Leo nard 1 9 92 ; Takaki 1 98 9). Furtherm ore, the Bay Area is home to a v ery div erse Indian comm unity , w ith residents hailing from all ov er the subcontinent and ranging fro m entrepre neurs in Silicon Valley to assembly-line w o rkers.
2 . For an anthropological analy sis of goods as spheres of ex change and gift-giv ing see Bohannan (1 95 5 ) and Gregory (1 98 2 ) respectively. On the semiotics of mate- rial culture, see Sahlins (1 97 6); Ho dder (1 98 2 ); Shanks & Tilley (1 98 6). Important influences on the symbolic analy sis of goods may be found in Douglas & Isherw ood (1 97 8 ); Appadurai (1 98 6); and Miller (1 995 ). See also the special issue o f Eth nos (64:2 , 1 999), titled ‘Objects on the Loose: Ethnographic Encounters w ith Unruly Artifacts.’
3 . See also George (1 997 ) and Visw esw aran (1 997 ) on race -blindness among South Asians in the u.s.
4. Insightful as Ho nig’s argument is, it ignores issues of racial inequality and hege - monic constru ctio ns o f cultural difference. Also, this argument is itself based on an assimilationist narrative because, contrary to what it presumes, not all immigrants can (or w ish to) ‘embra ce’ America: for many , the ineffability of racial and cultural difference forestalls such an embra ce.
5 . See also Palumbo-Liu 1 99 9. 6. This appears to be more true of stores in Berkeley , w ith its large student popula-
tion and liberal, multicultural politics, than Milpitas and Sunny vale where they cater largely to shoppers of South Asian origin rather than to the ‘mainstream’ community. One informant commented to me that ‘w hite people loo k out of place’ in stores in Sunny vale, imply ing that one didn’t see too many European Americans there .
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7 . Cf. Mankekar 1 999 on the discursive constitution of no tions of Indian Womanhood in India.
8 . Multiculturalism is characterized by the aesthetic ization and commodificatio n of cultural difference (Low e 1 99 6:9). It seems to me that w hile some Indian gro- cery stores might enable alternative cultural practices resistant to an assimilationsist model of u.s. national culture, they often also reify , aesthetic ize and co mmodify ethnic difference. This is particularly true of stores in Berkeley w hich also cater to European American customers and, hence, feel compelled to rep resent ‘In- dian culture’ to ‘mainstre am’ Americans. This app ears to be less ap plicable to stores in Sunny v ale and Milpitas w hich, as po sited abov e, are no t frequented v ery much by Euro pean American customers.
9. See Dhaliw al 1 995 and Wadhw ani 1 9 98 for excellent analy ses of labor politics w ithin Indian family -run stores in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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