A REPRESENTATION OF SOCIAL STRATIFICATION THROUGH STREET FOOD AND FINE DINING: AN URBAN SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF CLASS AND IDENTITY IN MOHSIN HAMID’S HOW TO GET FILTHY RICH IN RISING ASIA

Abstract

The study is an analysis of socio-economic structures, class consciousness, and the moral aspect of consuming in Mohsin Hamid's How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013) that demonstrates the significance of street food/ fine dining. Theoretically, we would seek to understand how the eating style and consumption of people express social status, aspiration, and marginalization of people through the ideas of cultural capital, habitus, and social distinction that were developed by Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist, in his book Distinction, published in 1984. At an early stage of the novel, plain community meals present a leading communal habitus to the protagonist, whereas eating in expensive restaurants represents an untouched performative side that is linked to the social movement besides letting the readers themselves see what the writers’ teenagers are going through when they eat out (Hamid, 2013, pp. 1, 8, 10, 181).  It was found that though there was a lot of rich material and space to work, it does not imply that he/she has fulfillment, legitimacy, or security. This leads to the issue of perpetuation of inequity via taste and also in cultural practice, despite the material well-being or lavish area of the one; therefore, the foreground must read Hamid's text on alimentation as a semiotic manifestation of power, identity, and status in the postcolonial neoliberal modernity.