User:Alice/Grad reading

Main research topics

Reading on food

Article: Caring about food: doing gender in the foodie kitchen - Kate Cairns, Josee Johnston, Shyon Baumann

While I really dislike the usage of the term 'foodie' to refer to people who, like me, have a deep and personal interest in food, I regardless found this article to be quite helpful in outlining some points I would also like to make in my research. The article is based on a series of interviews with people of both genders whose lives revolve around food practices, without being involved directly in the food industry. The article tries to identify patterns of gender stereotypes being enforced in people's relationship with food, or as they call it 'doing gender'. Feminist literature on this topic has shown that 'social and cultural meanings attached to food serve to perpetuate unequal gender relations'. Traditionally, women have been disproportionately assigned food (unpaid) domestic labour, mostly associated with women's roles as care givers within the heteronormative family.

doing gender = 'a woman conducts herself as recognizably womanly' (Feeding the family, Marjorie DeVault (1991, 118) 
/// accountability, gender is accomplished through situated enactments that are accountable to the prevailing gender order (west and zimmermann, 1987, 135).

Even though women are mostly in charge of the preparation of food, their ability to take pleasure out of food is heavily restricted by societal pressure on maintaining a certain figure, restrains on expressing pleasure, etc. By contrast, men's involvement with food has always been seen mostly as a hobby, or a display of skill, often outdoors and for entertainment (even in TV, women are mostly portrayed in domestic settings, while many men cook outdoors). The interviewed people seemed to 'reinscribe particular understandings about gendered food practices' while negotiating 'cultural norms mandating gender equality'. The article also make clear the fact that class plays a crucial role when talking about 'foodie' culture, although they do not provide a cross-class representation. Privilege allows for people to invest time, money and energy into engaging with food at a superior level, other than subsistence: 'selective food consumption is enabled by class privilege'.

Other ideas that come up:

• cooking as investment in family health and care has very rarely been mentioned by any of the men interviewed, while the women had it as a central point
• cooking as obligation vs cooking as hobby, gendered
• emphasis on knowledge and skill to articulate their food identities (men), with role models (men), also heroic stories of exotic meats and ingredients

In conclusion, this article identifies instances in which gender stereotypes become clear in people who are highly interested in food culture, in three different aspects of it: pleasure, care work and knowledge. To be noted that the study took place in 2008 in the US across various states, with almost 50/50 gender distribution (slightly more women), 30 respondents of various ages.

Article: Cooking up lives: Feminist food memoirs - Arlene Avakian

Rather than being super informative regarding my research per se, this article has given me some insights into the genre of feminist food memoirs, of which I am certain I will be reading more soon. The memoirs referenced in this article are:

• The Language of Baklava: A Memoir - Diana Abu-Jaber, NY: Pantheon Books, 2005
• A day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love and War - Annia Ciezaldo, NY: Free Press, 2011
• Bento Box in the Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America: A food Memoir - Linda Furiya, Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2006
• Tasting Home: Coming of Age in the Kitchen - Judith Newton, Berkeley, CA: She Writes Press, 2013

Reading on other things

Book:Geography of Home: Writings on Where We Live - Akiko Busch

In this book, Akiko Busch reflects on the domestic landscape and how it has changed its form and function throughout years and generations. Together with changes in traditional notions of families and gender roles within the family unit, people have adapted the homes they live in to suit their specific needs and situation. In the chapter 'Kitchen', she recalls her memories of her mother's kitchen as a laboratory, a place where alchemy experiments happened regularly: 'in our house, the kitchen was the place where science collaborated regularly and gracefully with creative imagination.' She then goes on to describe the history of kitchens as one of heat sources, as different solutions for heating throughout the years have greatly influenced the architecture of kitchens, as well as their place within the home: open fire, gas, electricity. The role of the kitchen today is similar to that in the 17th century, when kitchens first moved inside the home: 'the burgher dining room, often as the bedroom too, and occasionally as a social chamber'. It was also often represented in paintings, as with Dutch painters, establishing itself as the central part of a home in terms of importance. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the kitchen's role became more of a 'service area', when kitchen work became exclusively associated with women's work and therefore less important than whatever men were doing in factories. 'Food preparation was relegated to a separate building, partly because it was thought safer to distance the flame of the hearth from the rest of the house. But it was also kept separate because smells emanating from the kitchen were thought to be vulgar and inappropriate.' The kitchen has been reinvented throughout centuries by many; today, rather than being hidden, or considered simply a functional part of the home, it is a selling point. Busch argues that, with our increasing engagement with the electronic, cyber world, 'we simultaneously cultivate more physical, tangible experiences that demand we use our abilities to see, smell, hold, and touch in a real and visceral way.' She also argues that the importance of kitchens is also a sign of people's shifting attitudes towards domestic rituals done for pleasure rather than necessity, and the developing need for various food processing machinery that have found their place in the home (as opposed to buying already processed foods). 'When processed foods were introduced, they were seen as a luxury that would liberate housewives from unwanted domestic labor. Today's luxury, it seems, is to be able to do the work yourself - albeit with the help of your tools.' The kitchen is the place where people can 'find some balance to the acceleration in which we are so invested elsewhere', where a selection of 'chores' that we choose ourselves are performed, not as labour, but as comforting ritual.