Stirring it up: Community cooking as social reproduction

Vortrag

Teil der Sitzung

[FS-318] Spaces of social reproduction (1/3)

Sitzungstermin

Donnerstag (21. September 2023), 09:00–10:30

Sitzungsraum

HZ 12

Autor*innen

Anna Verwey (Universität Graz)

Kurzbeschreibung

This contribution will address how cooking is understood and shared as social reproduction outside of private kitchens at home. In particular, the focus will be on communal cooking, for example in urban initiatives, and the questions of who cooks for whom?

Schlagwörter

Cooking, Social Reproduction, Kitchen, Women, Food Geographies

Abstract

Next to cleaning, cooking is one of the tasks which is mentioned constantly when talking about social reproduction. Cooking – or at least: eating – is essential for subsistence. In search for a symbol for social reproduction, the housewife in ‘her space’, the private kitchen, surrounded by foodstuff and cookware, is the most common stereotype. The (private) kitchen is a space produced by and through cooking and eating. Critique and interventions by materialist-feminists often depart from gendered divisions of labor in general and the gendered ‘nature’ of reproductive work in particular – a type of work that is essential and yet un(der)paid and invisible (Federici und Cox 1974). In geography food and eating is central to food geographies (Cook u.a. 2013), whereas cooking is rather mentioned vaguely even though being a necessary condition for eating. If addressed, an ideal of devotion and passion is associated with (private) cooking (Giard 1998).

When transferring cooking as social reproduction to the public sphere, old and new questions emerge: who is cooking for whom? Which other kitchen-like spaces exist outside the home? What are social and political roles of community-kitchens, e. g. related to urban initiatives, to training kitchens for cooking classes, established and improvised kitchens for food sharing (and events), Küfa (kitchen for everybody) and other forms of collective cooking. How are these forms of (community) cooking organized and by whom? Which roles cooking take in social movements and how is it negotiated? Who is cooking and for whom in these spaces?

In this contribution, I will elaborate on how cooking as reproductive work is addressed in urban initiatives, how these initiatives deal with the need to cook, including doing the dishes, and who actually does this work. I approach the spaces and negotiations of preparing meals together and the following cleaning up framed by perspectives of social reproduction, food geographies, and community care.