Ethical Affects will trace the entanglement of the sensory, the material, and the discursive that emerge at the intersection of food, ritual and trade in Muslim Mumbai. Through five ethnographic chapters that move between different locations and times of Muslim food practice, it shows how the senses and sensibilities of halal ritual, food, meat and slaughter are deeply wound up with forms of relation, trade, being and value,” explained Iso Lomso fellow Shaheed Tayob of the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Stellenbosch University.
The book is based on ethnographic research which Tayob conducted in Mumbai between 2012/14. He explained that Mumbai is a megacity with 22 million inhabitants of which around four million are Muslim. “It has undergone rapid change and development but it’s not even,” he said. ‘I’m trying to understand the impact of this modernisation alongside the profound political shifts (including the rise of the BJP Party and President Narendra Modi) that have occurred in this period.”
He explained that as a minority population, Muslims in Mumbai have faced the spectre of increasing ghetto-isation. “What was ‘Native Town’ is now ‘Muslim Town’.
“But Muslim areas are also not contained, not exclusive, other people enter them and engage,” he added. “And, of course, there is not one homogenous Muslim’
“Muslims, still central to the thriving economic life of the cosmopolitan city are increasingly marginalised through a process of abjection whereby presence in the meat industry, culinary practice, and rituals of animal sacrifice and fasting, are taken as signs of the abject nature of Islam and Muslims,” he continued. “Yet within Muslim networks a different set of ethical and affective practices and resonances emerge. Halal ritual entails the conjuncture of divine injunction, dietary law, human-animal relation, and market exchange in ways that call forth an alternative ethical and affective embodiment.”
“This research thus charts the changes and contestations of halal slaughter, meat, food, fasting and sacrifice by Muslims in Mumbai for insight into how Muslim butchers, consumers and traders inhabit, contest, and assert their place in a changing city.”
In a book that he described as being about affect, sense, interactions, sensibility and ethics, he explained some of the terminology used. “Affect is about the moods, motivations, and atmospheres, that pervade and permeate space.”
He explained that sense is a polyvalent term encompassing both the sense of space but also the senses. “There are different ways to understand sense,” he said. “Sense is only inherent in the moment of articulation. Sense permeates space but not necessarily in the meaning of the words used. The way things are said and what it conveys is important.”
“While sensibility is about a bodily orientation in space and time,” he said.
“Ethics are about acting in a way you think is good mediated by objective engagement with the world. It’s the idea of good in relation to a particular subject worthy of good – how it is acted, lived and engaged.”
He emphasised that ethics is also always political. “In the anthropology of ethics, we think of the person/self but also in relation to others which is fundamentally political. The foundational texts on ethics make it clear that it is political.”
“How we theorise good is deeply moulded around language,” he continued. “How you act and live is enacted through language. We inhabit various forms of language and draw on them. Language is about second-order reflection.”
“Every moment of interaction involves both the ethical and the affective. For example, pork consumption is disgusting to Muslims but not to others.”
Referring to the work of feminist scholar Sara Ahmed, he added that emotion and affect are always historically situated.
“The city is an affective space. Economic change, progress and development are all affective positions that may exclude others. There are historical assumptions of value and who counts, and some people are not included.”
In Mumbai anti-Muslim stigma circulates in the air,” he added. “And people resist or contest their own abjection. Development has not produced a new, shiny city rather affects authorise new forms of inclusion/exclusion.”
Stories and conversations
Working through the details of some of the stories he encountered and conversations he had (“you never know the interactions you will encounter in the field”), Tayob highlighted some of the issues that are points of change and, sometimes, contestation.
This included the resurfacing of memories of previous violence and trauma that new political change can herald – “the affective is not linear but is always there”.
Another issue that was repeated was the lack of trust for Halal certification when global entities like Subway and McDonalds can be certified. But he also noted that such distrust actually contravenes the basic sense of Halal and is offensive. “You can’t distrust someone from another community – humanity comes first.”
Another area of contestation Tayob highlighted was the presence of both fresh (i.e. slaughtered on site) and frozen chicken – “Some people are disgusted by slaughter while others are suspicious of packaged.”
Tayob explained that Halal refers to actions, food, or practices that are permissible or lawful under Islamic law, while haram refers to what is prohibited or unlawful. “But both Halal and Haram are intimately connected with pure and not pure in India. It goes beyond meat to economics and trade. We have to excavate from religion to economics.”
He also focused on the issue of sacrifice as ritual. He explained that goats are sacrificed to herald important events, however, you have to raise the animals first – this enacts affective practices of care and he noted cases where people become attached to the animal they raise and therefore keep it and buy another goat to slaughter. “The affect of care exceeds what they are supposed to do.”
“Goats are part of urban life in India, he added. “As a city transforms, sanitised urban models usually develop but this is not the case in India.”
He noted that in all these issues “straight moral assumptions don’t work. People have complicated relationships with one another, with religion, and with the changing economics.”
“I’m looking at the way sense and sensibility is wound up with questions of value. The ethical affects chart the changing ways Muslims in Mumbai navigate the city and the new politics of urban Muslims. The ethical aspects are complex. Dense bloody relations and economic engagement lead to the emergence of different types of ethics. We have to rethink and challenge our sense of affective and ethical certainty.”
Michelle Galloway: Part-time media officer at STIAS
Photograph: SCPS Photography