MAKING IT: SUCCESS, MEDIOCRITY, AND FAILURE IN THE KITCHEN A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI’I AT MANOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN SOCIOLOGY APRIL 2021 By Ellen T. Meiser Dissertation Committee: Dr. David T. Johnson, Chairperson Dr. Jennifer Darrah Dr. Manfred Steger Dr. Wei Zhang Dr. Cathryn Clayton Keywords: Success, Mediocrity, Failure, Culinary Industry, Chefs, Cooking, Emotions, Culture, Embodiment, Kitchen Capital 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not exist if it were not for the guidance, encouragement, and intelligence of my advisor, Dr. David T. Johnson. Mahalo nui loa for the many hours you’ve spent talking with me, reading over drafts, and sending me articles and books that you thought I’d find helpful. I hope one day to be as fantastic a mentor as you have been to me. I also want to thank my committee members Dr. Jennifer Darrah, Dr. Manfred Steger, Dr. Wei Zhang, and Dr. Cathryn Clayton for their great minds, great support, and great suggestions throughout my dissertation process. Much of the joy of graduate school stems from the relationships you form with classmates. So, thank you to my colleagues who offered their eyes to look over drafts, ears to listen to meandering talks, and words of advice. Last, I want to thank my family: my mom and dad, whose pride in me has never wavered and whose love is unending. My brother, who informed me at the age of 11 that I was pronouncing “culinary” incorrectly—leading to me tell everyone I was going to attend “coronary school” to become a chef—and who almost 20 years later let me stay with him as I conducted interviews in New York. My sister-in-law, who is a fountain of insight, writing advice, fun, and thoughtfulness. My nephew, who brings infinite smiles to my face. And my husband, who forever makes me feel like a success. Mahalo to you all. 2 ABSTRACT Restaurants, diners, and cafes dot every metropolis and whistle-stop in America, employing roughly 2.5 million chefs and cooks. Using in-depth interviews (n=50) and surveys (n=258) of kitchen workers and 120 hours of participant-observation of a restaurant in Anchorage, Alaska, this dissertation explores the culinary world and investigates social psychological perceptions of success, mediocrity, and failure. I ask two primary questions: what does it take to “make it” in the commercial kitchen? And how do individuals, in their attempt at “making it,” form and revise their subjective notions of success, mediocrity, and failure? This study shows that “making it” in a creative blue-collar industry hinges on the accumulation of kitchen capital, an occupation-specific form of cultural capital that displays one’s grasp of workplace culture, cooking, and an individual’s identity within the kitchen hierarchy. It is accrued through education, embodied skill, emotion management, and the domination of others’ space and person—the primary topics of the substantive chapters of this dissertation. And it is done so in hopes of success and occupational mobility within the formal “brigade system,” the common organizational structure of Western kitchens. Consequently, the process and actual accumulation of occupation-specific capital influences one’s perceptions of and ability to achieve success. As chefs and cooks try to “make it,” they actively reframe personal history to fit narratives of “success,” despite objective evidence of the contrary. Subjects from this study preferred to deny personal mediocrity and failure, an inclination scholar Daniel Gilbert (2005) has found in other populations. Thus, I conclude this dissertation with an exploration into the cognitive biases, sociological reasonings, and subjective manipulations behind such optimistic evaluations of the self. The implications of establishing kitchen capital as a concept is to expand sociological understandings of how cultural capital functions within work, and to encourage future researchers to continue examining occupation-specific capital in other industries. Exploring these forms of capital not only highlight what a profession values, but also the hierarchical structures that mediate the values and principles that guide workplace behaviors. We can use these notions of cultural capital to understand how and where workers draw their lines of distinction and cultural boundaries. This dissertation closes with an epilogue describing the impacts of COVID-19 on the culinary industry and kitchen workers. Using data from follow-up interviews, I argue that kitchen capital—a key factor of occupational success prior to the pandemic—has remained essential during these uncertain times, and will continue to long after. Data also show that stress and worry over health have depleted many individuals’ cognitive and emotional resources, and have blinded people from a long-term perspective that includes notions of success, ordinariness, and failure. Additionally, the pandemic has given privileged individuals a glimpse into the reality of the everyday trials of the disadvantaged—a state that many kitchen workers existed in prior to and during the pandemic. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1. SUCCESS, MEDIOCRITY, AND FAILURE IN THE KITCHEN 6 The American Culinary World 8 Kitchen Culture 15 On Capital 19 Cultural Capital 19 Culinary Capital 21 Kitchen Capital 25 Chapter Summary 30 CHAPTER 2. RESEARCH METHODS 33 Research Methods 35 In-Depth Interviews 35 Surveys 42 Participant-Observation 45 Strengths and Limitations 48 Methodological Limitations 48 Strengths 52 CHAPTER 3. LEARNING HOW TO MAKE IT 54 Formal Education: Culinary School 58 Applying and Enrolling 61 Daily Life 62 Tempering Expectations 66 Informal Education: Learning On The Job 72 Learning Through Competition 80 Competition and Quality in Local Markets 82 Stacking Up Against the Rest 84 Debunking Formal Education 86 Pretension, Propaganda, and Reality 86 Is It Worth It? 94 Conclusion 98 CHAPTER 4. EMBODIED SKILLS 100 Embodiment of Capital 103 Moving Your Body 105 Physical Markings of a Chef 108 “Talking the Talk, Walking the Walk”: Attitudes and Branding 113 Bullshitting and Deluding 116 Publicists and High-End “Talk” 118 Food Media 120 Having and Navigating Taste 124 Cultural Taste 124 The Palate 127 Conclusion 130 4 CHAPTER 5. EMOTIONS IN THE HEAT OF THE KITCHEN 133 Stress in the Kitchen 137 Emotional And Philosophical Stoicism 143 Empathy and Kindness 146 The Joys of Cooking 149 Happiness 150 Passion 155 Reciprocity of Pleasure 157 Emotional Barriers 161 Conclusion 166 CHAPTER 6. GAINING CAPITAL THROUGH DOMINATION 168 Interpersonal Domination 170 Spatial Domination 174 Protective Space 178 Domination of People 179 Psychological Domination 181 Physical Abuse 183 Sexual Domination 185 Exploitation of Time 190 Who are the Victims? 196 Being Dominated 198 Tolerating Domination 201 Leaving the Kitchen 203 Resisting 207 Conclusion 211 CHAPTER 7. CONCLUSION 217 Coping with Success, Mediocrity, and Failure 227 Limitations of the Study 233 Sociological Implications and Future Research 237 EPILOGUE. REMAKING IT: COOKING DURING THE PANDEMIC 241 Cooking Through the “New Normal” 246 The Chef Instructor 247 The Line Cook 248 The Private Chef 249 The Ex-Line Cook, Now Private Chef 250 The Tiki Bar in Anchorage, Alaska 252 Reflections 252 APPENDIX A. STRUCTURED INTERVIEW GUIDE 258 APPENDIX B. SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE 260 REFERENCES 265 5 Chapter 1. Success, Mediocrity, and Failure in the Kitchen “What is success?” executive chef Mathew Newton posed to me as we sat in his sleek restaurant. The table sat at was positioned in the middle of the dining area with a clear view through floor-to-ceiling windows of the beautiful San Diego coast line. Framed awards and clippings of magazine features on the chef from Bon Appetit, GQ, Gourmet, and Food and Wine decorated the entryway. It would be fair to call Mathew a success. After a short pause the silver-haired 50- something answered himself, Success is really building a life that gives you happiness and balance, you know? And sometimes that doesn't exist at the high level. And sometimes it does. Sometimes it exists in the middle of the pack, but sometimes it doesn't. So, I think it really just depends on who you are… and the opportunities. You know, part of it's a little bit of luck. And connections. Mathew is one of fifty kitchen workers interviewed for this project and asked to tease apart what success, averageness, and failure look like in their professional and personal lives. And, like all of his fellow interviewees, Mathew described success as changing, situational, and multi-dimensional. An individual’s notions of success correspond with objective or subjective standards one day and contradict them the next. Perceptions of success are context specific, yet deeply influenced by upbringing, relationships, socioeconomic status, gender, race, culture, age, and politics. And how individuals evaluate success can be grounded in countless factors: morals, ethics, career achievements, intimacy, wealth, social comparison, and—in Mathew’s mind—emotions and life balance. As political theorist Murray Edelman (1988) has written, Beliefs about success and failure are among the most arbitrary… constructions and perhaps the least likely to be recognized as arbitrary. The issue turns on which actions and which consequences are to be highlighted and which ignored, for every act brings a chain of consequences that help some people and hurt others. (p. 43) All of the above are true for averageness and failure. They are also multifaceted, contextual, and intensely social. They are arbitrary, but nevertheless hold great weight over our lives. Yet 6 despite the fact that we encounter failure and mediocrity1 more often than success, we tend to focus on the latter. This is true in academic research (Malpas and Wickham 1995; Bills 2013; Schulz 2010), in popular social science works2, like Malcolm Gladwell’s (2008) Outliers: The Story of Success (Tough 2012; Duckworth 2016), as well as in our everyday conversations.