Main description:

The popular narrative of "globesity" posits that the adoption of Western diets is intensifying obesity and diabetes in the Global South and that disordered metabolisms are the embodied consequence of globalization and excess. In Metabolic Living Harris Solomon recasts these narratives by examining how people in Mumbai, India, experience the porosity between food, fat, the body, and the city. Solomon contends that obesity and diabetes pose a problem of absorption between body and environment. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Mumbai's home kitchens, metabolic disorder clinics, food companies, markets, and social services, he details the absorption of everything from snack foods and mangoes to insulin, stress, and pollutants. As these substances pass between the city and the body and blur the two domains, the onset and treatment of metabolic illness raise questions about who has the power to decide what goes into bodies and when food means life. Evoking metabolism as a condition of contemporary urban life and a vital political analytic, Solomon illuminates the lived predicaments of obesity and diabetes, and reorients our understanding of chronic illness in India and beyond.

Contents:

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

Interlude. Birthday Cakes 27

1. The Thin-Fat Indian 31

Interlude. Mango Madness 65

2. The Taste No Chef Can Give 69

Interlude. The Ration Card 99

3. Readying the Home 105

Interlude. Stamps 141

4. Lines of Therapy 145

Interlude. Waiting Room Walls 187

5. Gut Attachments 193

Conclusion. Metabolic Mumbai 225

Notes 235

Bibliography 253

Index 271