Having posted the tied winners of this year’s SAFN Anthro Day Photo contest (which you can see here and here), it is time to post the photos submitted by Shivani Kaul, who took second place. Kaul is a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. She submitted a photo essay entitled “Feeding tensions during the First 1000 Days in Bhutan.” The series caught our attention because of the juxtaposition of food, landscapes, and people contextualized by commentary on climate change, public health, and changing culture. The combined images and texts can be quite jarring, which of course makes the whole essay effective. Congratulations, Shivani!
Feeding tensions during the First 1000 Days in Bhutan Shivani Kaul, PhD Candidate in Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam
Photo 1. Nutritionists and economists in Bhutan are concerned about how ‘traditional diets’ made up of white rice, chili, and potatoes will impact the future health and economic growth of generations to come. Informed by epigenetic approaches to malnutrition and stunting in particular, they increasingly target the eating practices of maternal and child bodies during the First 1000 Days – the period from conception until the second birthday considered sensitive for the development of health and disease. Here, a plate of white rice and ezay (dried chili and cheese salad) prepared by their hosts awaits the ethnographers in the central valley of Tang. Photo by Shivani Kaul.
Photo 2. In contrast, social historians and sociologists in Bhutan emphasize that contemporary food practices in the country are not timeless. They observe that historical changes such as mid-20th century highway construction have widened the circulation of food commodities like white rice and packaged noodles. Today even in the small off-highway town of Misethang in lower Tang valley, we found Maggi noodles garnished with local vegetables were the most readily available midday meal outside the home. Photo by Shivani Kaul.
Photo 3. Social scientists in Bhutan emphasize the diversity and ecological specificity of foods across the valleys of this part of the eastern Himalayas – prior to the national homogenization of cuisine as rice with ‘chili and cheese’ or ema datsi. This plate of khepthang (wheat flatbreads) rolled up with ma (local allium greens) exemplifies some of the variety still alive in Tang – but also the rising preference for wheat and white rice over other cereals Photo by Shivani Kaul.
Photo 4. The homogenization of food production and palates over the last half-century in Bhutan has accompanied a changing climate in this high altitude setting, which is also the most mountainous country in the world. Here, Tang valley in the summer is lush with different crops maturing side by side. But some of these plants are exposed to higher temperatures due to a warming climate and later sowing times of younger generations, who are less certain in their knowledge of seasonal cycles. Photo by Shivani Kaul.
Photo 5. Potato plants dot the soils of upper Tang valley, which was experiencing a drought when we arrived in June 2023. Photo by Shivani Kaul.
Photo 6. Some fields of potato plants were drying out and dying due to the ongoing drought, as pointed out to us by our host family. Photo by Shivani Kaul.
Photo 7. Yet at the same time, rice seedlings were now growing in a paddy field of Tang in central Bhutan. This was a climatic feat that valley residents previously thought would be impossible due to the cold climate and high altitude of this niche. Photo by Shivani Kaul.
Photo 8. Concerned about the drought and its impact on the future health of semchen (sentient beings) in the region, households in the Ogyencholing village hosted a ritual circumambulation of Buddhist scriptures intended to impact the rainfall in June 2023. After a procession of neighbouring villagers carrying manuscripts on their backs arrived in Ogyencholing, one householder in the host community offered marchang (alcohol libation) during the opening ceremony of tendrel (interdependent origination or auspicious alignment) in the courtyard of their local 14th century Vajrayana temple. Photo by Shivani Kaul.
Photo 9. The marchang libation is an offering of alcohol made of local grains. In this case, the fermentation of barley generates liquid that is then filtered through a bamboo sieve and offered with a metal ladle to the assembled human and more than human semchen (sentient beings). Photo by Shivani Kaul.
Photo 10. A light rain begins to fall after the procession of villagers leaves Ogyencholing. Photo by Shivani Kaul.
Photo 11. The next day, Ogyencholing households hosted a ceremony thanking and supplicating the neypo (local host deity) for feeding abundance and healthy children. The tsog (blessed food) offering platter includes a variety of colorful foods ranging from fried biscuits, lollipop, watermelon, dried beef, banana, and chili. But the centrepiece is a mound of butter mixed with a roasted and ground powder made of barley and wheat called kabchi, as indicated by the index finger of co-researcher Sonam Choeki Wangmo. We slowly ate the tshog, partaking in and becoming members of the neypo in the process. Photo by Shivani Kaul.
Photo 12. The two-year-old child of a mother we interviewed in Tang valley approached the neypo altar, where plates of tsog offerings made of kabchi and other foods sat in front of the host deity sculpted out of colorful painted butter discs. Photo by Shivani Kaul.
Photo 13. Multiple cereals that went into kabchi like barley have largely been displaced by high yielding and higher-status white rice varieties since the 1960s. However, some subsistence households in central and eastern Bhutan that we visited still grew barley and buckwheat. This is partly because of their ceremonial value as Dru-Na-Gu (‘nine sacred grains’) and their use in rituals. In Tang valley, barley grows now as a near-monocrop – as depicted here. But it used to grow as a maslin – a multi-cropped mixture of barley and wheat varieties, which in planting practice are difficult to separate. Maslins are rare today, but are speculated to be the co-evolved origin of grain crops around the world. Plant scientists concerned about climate change are interested in maslins for their drought, flood, and fungus resistance, genetic diversity, soil benefits, and nutritional qualities. Photo by Shivani Kaul.
Photo 14. Potatoes and meat sit in the center next to red rice and red chili on the right of this plate in Ogyencholing. These vestiges of highway infrastructure sit alongside puta (‘buckwheat noodles’), a customary flour-based dish typical in the high altitude agroecological setting of central Bhutan. Buckwheat is an ancient grain that is experiencing a resurgent interest among nutritionally-inclined households in Bhutan. Along with barley, buckwheat might be one of the oldest cereals to be cultivated in this part of the world – predating rice and millet. Rather than pre-judging Bhutanese food culture as unhealthy, ethnographically attending to food diversity in empirical practice affords climate-sensitive seeds, recipes, and ritual technologies that feed host deities of the land as an interdependent, delicate relationship between multiple semchen (sentient beings) – and not only resource for extraction. Photo by Shivani Kaul.
