[Thoughts] Food as Cognition: Contour Maps of Ahmedabad

The Food Project has been more of a Bribal ki Kichdi than any other project that I have been a part of. But the idea has been brewing and refining itself as we work on it. To trace histories, the original ideas can be referred to at this link.

The Food Project was originally planned in terms of distribution systems. So we had discussions about Food Miles and then we planned to have a look at the Mandi and its operations. Special focus would have been on the rearrangement of the Transport System for Food Distribution in face of a Disaster situation.

Then we came up with the idea of Food Map which later on grew into the concept of mapping the Food Stalls in Ahmedabad, tracing their histories, the cultures around these places and recording the changes in their distribution with time and space. We figured that you have to look at Food in terms of time, spaces and people. Within these three axes of representation, one could create a holistic preview of the semiotics of Food.

The problem statement then boiled down to the set of questions that need to be answered or a set of end objectives to be achieved, so that one could figure out the methodologies of going about it. What follows is an independent interpretation of a conversation between Praneet, Mohit and Ranjit making attempts at figuring out a basic methodology.

Food should be looked at with a holistic perspective of its life-cycle. Hence considering that there are four distinct phases in the life-cycle of Food viz. Production, Distribution, Consumption and Waste, you could make attempts at looking at these phases individually and then mapping them together to create a representation of the life-cycle.

Taking an example, one could look at Bhutta (Corn). There are two major varieties of it viz. the Desi (hard to chew and bite off) and the American (the softer ones). Thus the production module involves the varieties whereas the distribution module involves the various thellas that sell the Bhutta on highways, roadsides and cross-roads. One could look at the kind of people that stop-by at these stalls, their placement at various times and days of the week which would in turn create a movement pattern that could be mapped. The set of people who stop-by make up the consumption module and finally the act of throwing the remains on the roadside after consumption would fall into the category of the waste module.

The problem with the example is that it has only one attribute (Bhutta itself). So, one would have a very limited understanding of how systems with multiple attributes (two or more raw materials) would be represented. The discussion moved to a Paani Puri stall (two attributes… Batashe and Masala Paani) and the Bhel Stall (greater number of attributes).

While these two stalls were under consideration, we figured that the life-cycle of the raw materials runs in parallel to the life-cycle of the processed food. That is, the Batashe will have their own dynamics of production, distribution, consumption and waste and the Paani Puri will have its own. Though they always intersect either at the level of distribution or consumption. Thus one can focus on the distribution and consumption modules as the major interest areas.

In the process of documenting these modules, one needs to find the set of actors that play a crucial role in defining these modules. For example, the farmer is the most important actor in the production module while the Mandi, a vendor and the stall owners all makes up for the distribution cycle. The consumers for the processed food or the stall owners for the raw materials would make up for the consumption module and the same would be a part of the waste module.

In fact, looking at the entire problem in terms of actors… the stall owner plays a pivotal role being a part of three distinct modules. You could look at food through the eyes of a food stall owner. You just need the right ethnographic methodology to get this information out of the food stall owners around.

Primary Ideas/Ideals:

History of Food Project
Problem at Hand
Food Life-Cycle
Example: Bhutta
Raw materials vis-a-vis Processed Food
Actors