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Images of foodscape: Contemporary craftwork in the "medieval "i

Carlos Henrique Gonçalves Freitas School of Business and Management, Universidade Federal de Uberlandia, Brazil [email protected]

Cintia Rodrigues de Oliveira Medeiros School of Management and Business, Uberlândia Federal University, Brazil [email protected]

Introduction The idea of this research is associated with the notion of foodscape as "physical, organizational and sociocultural spaces in which the clients/guests encounter , and food-related issues including health messages” (Mikkelsen, 2011, p. 209), and the term "medieval cuisine" as a transhistorical analytical category – in the sense of medieval modernity as developed by Alsayyad and Roy (2006). Due to characteristics of its services, products and target groups, the work in fine-dining restaurants demands for its workers learning not only techniques, but also new tastes, ways of presenting dishes and service rituals (Ferreira, 2012). In addition, the kitchen staff are often poorly paid, have no prior experience and often poor schooling (Cavalli & Salay, 2007; Coelho & Sakowski, 2014). In fine-dining restaurants, cooks usually need to learn about new aesthetic dish- presentation patterns, which follow mainly and differ greatly from the looks of local traditional dishes or of self-serviced dishes from a restaurant or home (Lopes, Souza & Ipiranga, 2014; Benemann & Menasche, 2017); or even to learn inventive preparations that are often a hallmark of fine-dining restaurants (Benemann & Menasche, 2017); as well as to adjust local tastes as the Brazilian very sweet preferences contrast with the more moderate European palate that often guides haute-cuisine. This research attempts to interpret how the food and eating binomial, places and people are interconnected and how they interact in the production of a foodscape. Our interest is in the cultural and social understanding of food, and we seek to contribute to the sub-theme "The Resurgence of Craft Work: Meanings, Methodological Challenges and Philosophies," especially as to the challenges that researchers face when researching material artefacts created by workers. The term "medieval cuisine" does not refer to a rescue or discussion of - preparation techniques or recipes from a specific historical period. "Medieval cuisine" refers to the use of a theoretical analysis apparatus based on the discussion of a postmodern space

1 geography, which may allow a parallel between global cities’ contemporaneity, especially in emerging countries, and medieval cities’ arrangements (Alsayyad & Roy, 2006), transcending any decontextualized discussion or any one centred on a historical fact or on its context. The idea of a "medieval cuisine" plays the role of an allegory or methodological metaphor to help thinking the present; but recognizing the recurrence of elements of the past, which may have relevance for the discussion of citizenship, within the organizations and the society. From this perspective, it sought to understand how symbols, practices, discourses, roles and cultural representations of fine-dining restaurants’ kitchen staff are manifested and have repercussions on their experiences as they are confronted by the need to live together in the organization’s context, either by adjusting themselves to it, ignoring it or resisting it. Foodscape is a relatively recent term originated in the literature on food and eating in Anglo-Saxon countries. The notion of foodscape, in this study, is based on the discussion about food and eating, cooking and culinary, and then it is situated from the "medieval cuisine" metaphor’s wider, panoramic, perspective. There is a distinction between food as a material element directly linked to the idea of survival or maintenance of life, and eating as an intangible cultural good. Choices, classifications and behaviours related to food and eating vary according to the symbolism, representations and other imaginary constructions that reflect worldviews and social codes present in the way people interact with each other and with their social and natural environment. The of food and eating binomial (henceforth only "food and eating") can then be interpreted as a symbolic system related to the cultural life of a community. Together cooking, culinary, food, and may represent different sets of ideas, practices, behaviors, objects and artifacts that operate in a complementary or supplementary way, which may "imply ways of perceiving and to express a particular 'way' or 'style' of life that one wants specific to a particular group "(Maciel, 2004, p.36). One of the possible ways to understand culture is as a set of symbols and images that complement each other; that are shared by a group and order or guide their interactions with others, according to a common context of practices (Smircich, 1983). and Yanow (1993) traditionally expand this definition by defining culture as the set of values, beliefs, feelings, artifacts, expressions, myths, symbols, metaphors and rituals created, inherited, shared, perpetuated and transmitted by the individuals of a group and by the group, which, in this way, can also characterize and distinguish them. Food and eating are like a cut of culture, representing a landscape, practices and specific influences on the way of life and the choices of people, individual or collective. This conceptualization can thus be defined as a foodscape, a landscape, a dynamic representation of cultural spaces and practices of food and eating that are thus materially and socially mediated

2 and constructed within society by its individual, collective, or institutional agents (Johnston & Goodman, 2015).

Methodological procedures As a tool for collecting empirical material, we used the ethnographic shadowing technique (Czarniawska, 2014; McDonald & Simpson, 2014). During the shadowing, one of the authors of this research accompanied the of a fine-dining restaurant (henceforth under the Montecarlo pseudonym) in Uberlândia, Brazil, for two months. The idea was to observe how the chef communicates, organizes, motivates, instructs, guides, orders, corrects, helps, hinders, questions, responds, clears, delegates, ignores, attends and interacts, in any way, with his work colleagues from the kitchen, dining room and management in their daily-work routine (Quinlan, 2008). At the same time, the researcher took notes and obtained ad hoc testimonies, through conversations with him and his colleagues, about his exchanges with his colleagues, and with each other. Those observations and testimonies were not restricted to topics related to kitchen and restaurant tasks but, as far as possible, they reached behaviours, actions and speeches about their wider social context in and out of the organization, similar to what Vásquez, Brummans and Groleau (2012) admit. Moreover, as the shadowing progressed, it the widened it focus to include opportunities to observe and collect testimonials from the chef’s co-workers in relation to those interactions. In addition, photos and images were taken and collected as part of the empirical material. In the use of shadowing, we face many challenges, as well as ethical considerations about technique (Johnson, 2014). The shadowing involves the negotiation of spaces, feelings, ideas, thoughts, privacy and identities, exposed to relationships of undefinition, belonging or not, presence or not, and visibility or not (Quinlan, 2008). Failure to recognize also the limitation between shadowing theory and practice can aggravate poorly explored proximity, poor positioning, distancing, and discomfort. However, qualitative research has an emergent character (Creswell, 2014). The shadowing totalled 216 observation hours over two months, generating 309 photographs and 49 pages of field notes. Throughout the field work, in the researcher's attempts to observe, record and photograph the day-to-day life of the kitchen, he confronted himself, almost daily, with the alternation between sensations of acceptance, identification, recognition, estrangement, acceptance and distancing by the shadowees, not knowing exactly how to interpret them or simply write them down. However, the field work followed some guidelines

3 discussed in Gobo (2008), in order to minimize these uncertainties, to give theoretical and practical consistency to observations, notes and photographs, as well as to organize them in such a way that the recurrence of situations and feelings and their ability to contribute to new considerations or evidence could be carefully considered during the analysis of the results. Still in the planning phase, we used five cognitive modes for the collection of empirical material: listening, questioning, observing, reading and reflecting (Gobo, 2008). We discarded recording formal interviews because we understood that the use of tape recorder could compromise the spontaneity of the responses, as well as could compromise the staff’s and restaurant’s workflow. Nor would it be reasonable to expect the chef to devote part of his time, on a regular basis, to talk to a microphone. Often, interactions with the cooks were made on the move or between tasks. For example, one of the chefs with the greatest potential for contribution, for his history and knowledge of life, works, from 08:00 to 14:00, practically without resting, on the grill, and our interactions were interspersed by orders to march dishes, opening refrigerated-counter doors, changing side of the on the grill. That way, we decided to listen to what chefs and cooks had to say in informal interviews, and note down the observations. We made annotations about menus, datasheets and written warnings found in the surveyed. The interviews were conducted following the definition of a discursive interview, often with a speculative bias, in which the observers had the freedom to conduct them in their own terms, objectives, schemes and figures of language (Gobo, 2008). Still according to the suggestions of this author, during the annotations, it was tried to replicate as much as possible the linguistic registers, jargons and slang of the observed ones, noting the version and possible interpretation of the researcher, so that, after some time, still could understand what they said. The notes were divided into three categories: (i) "what do I see?"; (ii) "how do I feel it"; and (iii) "speculating". These three categories were thought from the four types of notes that Gobo (2008) suggests: (i) notes of observation; (ii) methodological notes; (iii) theoretical notes; and (iv) emotional notes. Under the "what I see" category, an attempt was made to write down all observations (tasks, information, symbols, interactions, locations, procedures, etc.) and information replicated using linguistic register, jargon and slang as used by the observed. In the "what I feel" column, an attempt was made to work out the way it reacted to what it observed, the impressions, emotions, and reactions that were aroused by the observations and considerations of the researcher. In the third column, "speculating", it was tried to leave considerations about possible links between the observations and the theoretical and methodological foundation, elaborated before the field and as preparations for the field.

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Results The analysis of the empirical material points to six themes arising from the interactions between the food and eating binomial, places and people in the production of a foodscape, of which only three will be discussed in this section. Our interpretation has led us to these themes that emerge when the artisanal work of making the food, the kitchen of the restaurant, and the workers interact in a foodscape, which is a physical, organizational and sociocultural space in which workers are faced with food and artefacts to produce meals.

1: Heat and emotion In addition to the long hours standing, the heat of the kitchen can be intense. The heat can be so much, particularly on days when the outside temperature reaches 33ºC, that it becomes necessary to refrigerate the ’s station, so that the can be processed without insects or heat that compromises its quality. In the Montecarlo, for example, during the works, a bain-marie, nine large stove-burners and two 75cm x 45cm gas grills remain in use in the finishing kitchen; as well as eight large stove-burners in the back-up kitchen. Despite an state- of-the-art ventilation system, the team, while surrounded by stoves, and bain-maries, feels its heat effects, which escalate in the frenetic pace a kitchen has to follow to serve up to 1.600 dishes (Figure 1). During the only one-hour daily break, for , the researcher joined the kitchen brigade, and the workers shared some of their richer but often dramatic stories filles with significant emotional load.

Figure 1: In the heat of the Montecarlo's kitchen. Source: The author, 2018.

2: Refuge and freedom

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Mary (a pseudonym), a kitchen helper, shared in detail with us her seven-year crack- dependence history, how it had affected her personal life, her family and health, and how the church's helped her recovery. Maria’s photo of in the washing station (Figure 2) is relevant to contextualize the production of a refuge and her freedom from interaction. Maria is responsible for washing all pots, dishes and cutlery – glasses and bowls, as in many a la carte restaurants, are washed and sanitized in the restaurant bar – but still finds time to help the stations in their mis-en-place.

Figure 2: Maria and her safe harbour in the Montecarlo. Source: The author, 2018.

For Maria, her responsibilities at Montecarlo – which granted her relative independence within her well-defined tasks, and a relative isolation from other members, all clearly limited in time and space – provided ideal conditions for a person seeking peace and security, despite every physical and intellectual effort involved in their functions. What else could be so appealing to someone who seeks refuge from the dangers of idleness? As she explained, in an interaction with the researcher, there she could be with God without being bothered.

3: Nostalgia and the outsider From the viewpoint of the techniques and inputs needed for dish preparations, and for their service and consumption in the dining room, the Montecarlo employees acquire new knowledges and skills, about new traditions and , for which they demonstrate appreciation. These people, especially around their lunch table, reaffirmed their preferences for dishes and customs from their home regions, but they were not reluctant to discover the novelties as part of their cooking duties. Here it is possible to draw a parallel between the multiple context of these workers, their traditions and the different cuisines (national and foreign, such as French, Levantine and Italian, as well as from the Brazilian North-eastern and Mineira cuisines) that contribute to the menus they execute, and the notion of colonialism in

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Hall (1996), as such a result from this meeting of traditions and cuisines may be first and foremost a negotiation. Even the foreign cuisines’ standards are not free of a local touch. This "tropicalization" of international-cuisine classics can sometimes cause a mismatch between a local version of the dish and its original recipe. It is a process of assimilation of foreign flavours to local palates, a negotiation. But many European countries, including Italy, see their cuisine as a cultural and economic heritage. The quality control seal, the Denomination of Controlled and Guaranteed Origin (D.O.C.G.), which we see in their , can also be applied to pizzas, and even the European Commission itself is also in charge of helping to protect such kind of heritage (Tosato, 2013). To visually illustrate these differences, we placed photos of a risotto produced in Monte Carlo (Figure 3) and another according to its original recipe and techniques (Figure 4).

Figure 3: Risotto of from Montecarlo. Source: Autor, 2018.

Figure 4: Risotto of pumpkin, executed according to the original recipe of risotto. Source: Paul Williams, www.alamy.com, ID: C8GFYX, : IY01068367.

Final Considerations Based on Johnston and Goodman (2015) and Milkkensen (2011), we present the idea of foodscape as a landscape, a dynamic representation of cultural spaces and food and eating

7 practices that are, thus, materially and socially mediated and constructed within society by their individual agents, collective or institutional, with socio-economic and political developments. This landscape is built by interactions among the food-and-eating production craftwork, the restaurant's kitchen and its workers. The results of this research indicate that the food-and- eating craftwork is impregnated with emotions, personal narratives, cultural elements and material artefacts, yet in a professional kitchen, in an organizational context. People, food and eating, and places are interconnected in the production of a foodscape. Research on craftwork has encountered many challenges, including ethical aspects, and many opportunities, especially the possibilities of using visual aids as empirical material.

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i This study was partly financed by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES), Brasil, Finance Code 001.

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