Alex Rhys-Taylor - Food and Multiculture: A Sensory Ethnography of East London

Sensory Studies Series

Series Editor: David Howes

As the leading publisher of scholarship on the culture of the senses, we are delighted to present this series of cutting-edge case studies, syntheses and translations in the emergent field of sensory studies. Building on the success of the Sensory Formations series, this new venture provides an invaluable resource for those involved in researching and teaching courses on the senses as subjects of study and means of inquiry. Embracing the insights of a wide array of humanities and social science disciplines, the field of sensory studies has emerged as the most comprehensive and dynamic framework yet for making sense of human experience. The series offers something for every disciplinary taste and sensory inclination.

A Sensory Ethnography of East London

Alex Rhys-Taylor

First published 2017 by Bloomsbury Academic

Published 2020 by Routledge
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Copyright Alex Rhys-Taylor, 2017

Alex Rhys-Taylor has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author or this work.

Cover image: Brick Lane market, London, England Scott E. Barbour/Getty Images

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Names: Rhys-Taylor, Alex, author.
Title: Food and multiculture: a sensory ethnography of East London / Alex
Rhys-Taylor.
Description: London, UK; New York, NY, USA: Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint
of Bloomsbury Publishing, P|c, [2017] | Series: Sensory studies series |
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016038786| ISBN 9781472581167 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Food habitsSocial aspects-England-London. |
MulticulturalismEnglandLondon. | Urban anthropologyEnglandLondon.
| East End (London, England)Social life and customs.
Classification: LCC GT2853.G7 R59 2017 | DDC 394. 1/209421dc23 LC record available
at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038786

Series: Sensory Studies

Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

ISBN 13: 978-1-472-58115-0 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-472-58116-7 (hbk)

Any work engaging in the social is, to one degree or another, a collaborative effort. This is all the more so when there are so many years of research behind the book, across which the collaborators have piled up. In the first instance I would like to extend my thanks to every market trader, restauranteur and shopkeeper entrepreneur that allowed me to lurk around their businesses; notably Irene and Mashun at Tomos Japanese Food, and the staff of Al Badar Fried Chicken. Special thanks to Paul Simpson for the laughs, and the rich insights into the historical East End that I discovered while chewing on a cup of cockles. Thanks go to all my peers at the NYLON seminars with whom I shared early drafts of this work, including occasional partners in crime Hannah Jones and Emma Jackson, along with the responsible adults in the group, Fran Tonkiss, Richard Sennett, Michael Bull and Vic Seidler. Among my peers, Shamea Mia, Vanessa Arena, Anamik Saha, Tomoko Tamari and Paz Concha have all also provided invaluable feedback and tip-offs. I am deeply grateful to David Howes for taking a punt on this monograph, and for the rigour of his feedback. Thanks also to my colleagues at Goldsmiths Sociology and the Centre for Urban and Community Research; it is a privilege to be surrounded by such simultaneously sharp minds and warm hearts. Among my colleagues, the most gratitude ought to be extended to Les Back, whose capacious sociological imagination opened the space for this study to be conceived, and whose encouragement kept it moving along. The biggest debt of all, however, is owed to Natasha Polyviou. As I sit here writing these last pages at home, Natasha is literally wrestling our son to the ground trying to make sure he doesnt disturb me. Your efforts are priceless and there are no words to express how grateful I am for that. One more sentence to go and Ill be able to cook dinner. Or maybe pick up a pizza.

Halfway along Whitechapel Road on a warm early October evening in 2015. A congested patchwork corridor of clothing wholesalers, budget hotels, homeless hostels, high-street retailers and a street market packing up for the day. Shutters are pulled down as the daytime businesses close. Bassy dance music pummels through the panelling of a low-riding hatchback as it passes through the thick traffic. Yogic exhalations of vanilla e-cig vapour intermingle with beedi and tobacco trails of pedestrians hurrying back home, to the cinema, to the doctor, to the shop for dinner ingredients. The sweet rose and frankincense of a mirror-lined Arabic fragrance retailer, open for evening trade, competes with the high street choices of the emerging party crowd. Powdery, citrus, jasmine, lilies and rose for her. Woody, grassy spices and herbs for him.

Whitechapel sits to the immediate east of The City, Londons central business district. Looking east along Whitechapel Road, the apricot setting sun catches the glass curtains draped over buildings towering on the horizon The Gherkin, The Cheesegrater and a cluster of several other less savoury sounding offerings. During the day, the white noise of riveters, buzz-saws and jackhammers accompanies the smell of concrete, sawdust, solvents and fresh paint; the sensory signatures of The Citys eastward creep. Paving the way for the new towers of luxury are the milky and nutty air of white-tiled coffee shops and a fog of herbs stoned baked pizza and nouveau pan-Asian cuisine. The new constellation encroaches on the aromatic environs of fried chicken shops and curry canteens. An evening chorus of default ring tones and message alerts chirrups away. Plans for the final hours of the week are laid out.

Moving westward, approaching Brick Lane, once best known for its Bengali curry houses, a smoky fog of charred lamb and chicken (emanating from newly opened Turkish restaurants) catches the nose and refracts the light. Passing through the mist of meat fumes is a German couple, mother and daughter. Their hair glistens with the synthetic bergamot of budget hotel shampoo. Es riecht nach Kreuzberg , says the mother to the daughter. It smells like Kreuzberg.

What, in a twenty-first century city like London, is the social significance of the transnational flow of ideas and materials that pass through it? How to conceptualize the citys cultures, without recourse to crude and ill-fitting caricatures of ethnicity, class, the local and the global? How to express the significance of an individuals dreams and fears, while attending to the contingencies and histories that shape her sensibility? How to get beyond the ways in which we talk about both ourselves and each other, to the significance of the ways in which we feel ? The following chapters argue that answers to each of these questions lie in a close attention to the sensory ambience of the city, and the everyday life that underpins it. More precisely, through honing a sensorial attention to a series of the spaces between The City and the East End over an eight-year period stretching from the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, through the 2011 riots and the Olympics, to the present day the following book highlights experiences, artefacts and relationships that help understand early millennial London. The hope is to present the reader with an appreciation of the role that oftoverlooked multisensory experiences might play, within the key sociological processes of our age.