'India Shopping': Indian Grocery Stores and Transnational Configurations of Belonging

Abstract

Abstract How do representations of 'India' shape the lives of members of a diasporic community, the identities they forge, and the politics they negotiate? This paper examines how grocery stores in the San Francisco Bay Area enable the construction of India and Indian culture, and argues that (1) Indian grocery storesin the diaspora form a crucial node in the transnational circulation of texts, images, and commodities between India and the diaspora; (2) the objects sold in these stores create varying regimes of value in different contexts; (3) gender (as it intersects with class and race) offers an important lens to examine the kinds of social practices facilitated by these stores. Throughout, the author wishes to foreground the on-going and contested construction of a transnational set of images, discourses, and institutions that engender what different people mean by 'India.' Keywords: ConsumptionDiasporaTransnational ProcessesPublic CultureObjects