СʪÃÃÊÓƵ

Skip to Content
Skip to main content
e

Professor James Staples
Professor - Anthropology

Marie Jahoda 221

  • Anthropology
  • Social Science and Communications

Research area(s)

  • South Asia
  • Medical anthropology (leprosy, disability, the body and pain, eradication)
  • Suicide
  • Anthropology of food
  • Biography and life history

Research Interests

I am a social anthropologist with a regional interest in South Asia and a long-standing fascination in how bodily differences are experienced, socially and viscerally, that continues to shape my work. I return regularly to the South Indian leprosy colony I have been visiting since 1984 to pursue ongoing fieldwork that has taken me in several directions, including a study of suicide; ongoing work on food and social mobility; and the writing of a detailed biographical account of a leprosy-affected man’s life. My latest book explores how beef-eating Christians, Muslims and Dalits in South India are experiencing the State's clampdown on cattle slaughter, alongside vigilante attacks from cow-protectionists.

Research grants and projects

Grants

Project details

British Academy (SG-161306) Holy cows and chicken Manchuria: food and social mobility in provincial South India - James Staples (PI)  £6,154.37

This project develops my existing work on food in South Asia by documenting and then analysing how major socio-economic and ecological changes in the region – beginning with the Green Revolution in the late 1960s and continuing through the liberal economic reforms of the 1990s and beyond – also transform how people consume and relate to food on an everyday basis. In particular, through life history interviews and participant observation I aim to explore how the people I work with in rural and small-town South India, often on the peripheries of what was described as an ‘emergent middle class’, utilise food and dining relationships to assert positive identities and affect social mobility.

Completed:

British Academy (SG-47129) £2,606 July 2007 - September 2009 James Staples (PI)

2009 - 2010 James Staples (PI)

Research links

Similar research interests

Research group(s)

  • CRIMA

СʪÃÃÊÓƵ London
Kingston Lane
Uxbridge
Middlesex UB8 3PH

Tel: +44 (0)1895 274000

Fax: +44 (0)1895 232806

Security: +44 (0)1895 255786

Directions to the campus

Brunel.ac.uk uses cookies to make our site better for you. By clicking on or navigating this site, you accept our use of cookies in accordance with our cookie policy.

Close this message