How do women express individual agency when engaging in seemingly prescribed or approved practices such as religious fasting? How are sectarian identities played out in the performance of food piety? What do food practices tell us about how women negotiate changes in family relationships? This collection offers a variety of distinct perspectives on these questions. Organized thematically, areas explored include the subordination of women, the nature of resistance, boundary making and the construction of identity and community. Methodologically, the essays use imaginative reconstructions of women's experiences, particularly where the only accounts available are written by men. The essays focus on Hindus and Muslims in South Asia, Sri Lankan Buddhist women and South Asians in the diaspora in the US and UK. Pioneering new research into food and gender roles in South Asia, this will be of use to students of food studies, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.

Introduction: The Politics and Culture of Food: South Asian Women and Their AgencyNita Kumar, Claremont McKenna College, California, USA and Usha Sanyal, Wingate University, North Carolina, USA2. Curing the Body and Soul: Health, Food, and Herbal Medicines for Nineteenth-Century South Asian Muslim WomenLaurel Steele, Independent Scholar, USA3. The Worship of Taste: Rokeya Hossain and the Politics of Ritual FastingParna Sengupta, Stanford University, California, USA4. Religious Recipes: Culinary Motherlines of Feasts and Fasts in IndiaSucharita Sarkar, D.T.S.S. College of Commerce, Mumbai, India5. Transcendental Transactions: Food Practices among Barelwi MuslimsSumbul Farah received her Ph.D. from the University of Delhi, India6. Between Khatm-e Qur'ans and Slametans: Gender and Class in South Asian and Indonesian Interdomestic RitualsPnina Werbner is Professor Emerita of Social Anthropology at Keele University, UK7. Buddhist Women and Alms-GivingPascale Engelmajer, Carroll University, USA8. Women's Ritually Shared Bodies and Food-Penance in Rural MaharashtraDeepra Dandekar, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin9. Fasting as a Complex Professional StrategyNita Kumar, Claremont McKenna College, California, USA10. Fasting, Feasting: Social and Religious Food Practices at a Barelwi Girls' MadrasaUsha Sanyal, Wingate University, USA11. Praying in the Kitchen: The Tablighi Jama'at and Female PietyDarakshan Khan International Institute of Islamic Thought in Washington, DC, USAIndex