Between Giant Corporate Retailers and Family Food Economies: A Focus on Mothers as “intermediaries” in India’s Neoliberal Development Strategies

This paper discusses findings from a qualitative study (involving interviews and survey data) that targets mothers as agents of change in shifting food and eating practices in urban India resulting from the growing presence of multinational eateries and a new consumer culture centered on corporate branding, shopping malls, and fast food.  

Although a growing literature explores changing consumption norms in India as an outgrowth of neoliberal development strategies there has been no specific focus on the role of mothers in facilitating or resisting these changes.  Furthermore, there has been no direct focus on how mothers’ own degree of influence on the family diet has changed with the growth of the neoliberal state.      

This paper views mothers as “intermediaries” experiencing and negotiating change between giant corporate retailers and traditional family food economies.  In this way we are able to examine from mothers’ own experiences and perspectives on 1) how the structure of eating has changed, 2) shifts in the family diet with the growing availability of alternatives, 3) concerns and conflicts in the family as a result of these changes and specific strategies mothers employ to negotiate them, 4) perceptions of the causes and culprits of dietary change, 5) how mothers’ own power and influence on the family diet have been affected, 6) shifting gender relations within the family.

A particularly concerning outgrowth of neoliberalism has been the sharp increase in health problems in India such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease that have been tied to lifestyle and dietary changes.  Viewing mothers as intermediaries allows us to examine the intimate processes by which neoliberal social transformations take effect.  It also allows us to see mothers as key agents in how public policy aimed at remedying the ill effects of the neoliberal food economy could be designed and implemented most constructively.