Cultivating Livability
Food, Class, and the Urban Future in Bengaluru
What makes for a livable life, and for whom? Taking Bengaluru, India, as a case study, Camille Frazier probes the meaning of “livability” by exploring the food networks connecting peri-urban farmers and the middle-class public. Examining the varying efforts to reconfigure processes of food production, distribution, retail, and consumption, she demonstrates how these intersections are often rooted in and exacerbate ongoing forms of disenfranchisement that privilege some lives at the expense of others.
In recent years, the concept of “livability” has captured the global imagination, influencing discussions about the implications of climate change on human life and inspiring rankings of “most livable cities” in popular publications. But what really makes for a livable life, and for whom?
Cultivating Livability takes Bengaluru, India, as a case study—a city that is alternately described as India’s most and least livable megacity, where rapid transformation is undergirded by inequalities evident in the food networks connecting peri-urban farmers and the middle-class public. Anthropologist Camille Frazier probes the meaning of “livability” in Bengaluru through ethnographic work among producers and consumers, corporate intermediaries and urban information technology professionals.
Examining the varying efforts to reconfigure processes of food production, distribution, retail, and consumption, she demonstrates how these intersections are often rooted in and exacerbate ongoing forms of disenfranchisement that privilege some lives at the expense of others.
