Is cooking a political act? Home cooking as food activism
Food Activism; Political Consumerism; Home Cooking; Practice Theory
This dissertation analyzes how the politicization of food, in the context of food activism, translates into changes in domestic cooking practices. Faced with the discourse that “cooking is a political act”, promoted by activists with the intention of politicizing eating practices and, specifically, cooking, the research discusses how the politicization process generates transformations around this practice, as well as disputes , limitations and ambiguities of this process. To this end, literature on political consumption, food activism and Theory of Practices was mobilized. When considering cooking as a social practice, the research aims to: (a) identify which political consumption strategies are mobilized by food activists in the arranged set of practices associated with cooking; (b) investigate how the elements that constitute the practice of cooking and the relationships between them have been affected by politicization processes; (c) understand in which ways food activists contribute and relate to conventions of normality around "appropriate" politicized cooking and, furthermore, (d) map the possible changes in the temporality of cooking that emerge from this process. In order to achieve the proposed objectives, a Systematic Bibliographical Review and qualitative fieldwork were carried out, through semi-structured interviews, participant observation and questionnaires, in which the domestic cooking of food activists was the sociological object. We selected, as informants, those individuals who identified themselves as food activists, who voiced discourses of politicization of cooking and who were the main person preparing the weekly meals in their family nucleus. The results point to changes in the elements that constitute the arranged set of practices around domestic cooking, such as rules, understandings, the teleoaffective structure and material arrangements. A typology of four variations of politicized cooking was proposed, namely: (i) to spread cooking; (ii) to spread veganism; (iii) for prioritizing the origin of ingredients; and (iv) to reduce waste. This typology was developed based on a praxeological analysis, in which the practice is interpreted as an emergent property, not an individual attribute, but a form of social engagement. Other dimensions are analyzed, such as political consumerism actions, indicators of the construction of norms around politicized cooking and the temporality of activists' eating practices.