Sacred Cows and Chicken Manchurian

"James Staples charts how cattle owners, brokers, butchers, cooks, and occasional beef eaters navigate the contemporary political and cultural climate. Sacred Cows and Chicken Manchurian offers a fine-grained exploration of the current situation, locating it within the wider anthropology offood and eating in the region and revealing critical aspects of what it is to be Indian inthe early twenty-first century."

~New Books in Anthropology

"Staples ushers us beyond binaries and into the lives of everyday eaters whose thoughts and politics rarely fall neatly into any standardized categories."

~HIMALAYA: The Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

"[E]ssential reading on food politics in South India."

~The Wire

"Through a detailed examination of the ways in which people negotiate the politics of eating meat in their everyday lives, Sacred Cows and Chicken Manchurian calls attention to the ambiguities, contradictions, and compromises that characterize Indian foodways as they evolve within specific historical and material contexts."

~Journal of Asian Studies