Loving kitchen. A study conducted in 2019 with 23 middle-class people (21 women, 2 men) who actively use the kitchen in the United States revealed the social use of the kitchen and the practices carried out in the kitchen. Three categories were revealed according to the interviewees’ use of the kitchen and their interpretation of it: Those who have a positive view of the kitchen, those who have a negative view of it, and those who have a relative view of it.
Those in the first category love kitchen work and find peace in the kitchen. Those in the second group stated that they do kitchen work out of necessity; Those in the third category stated that they enjoyed kitchen work in relative situations. For the majority of users, the kitchen has turned into a place of social relations built around primary needs, in other words, a living environment.
The behavioral patterns that users have learned and internalized since their childhood constitute their culinary habitus. These habitus consist of the stereotyped behaviors and kitchen regularities that users exhibit in both their own and others’ kitchens. Regularities are organized by users in the kitchen in an introverted and extroverted way, and are repeated with a unique rhythm.
It can be said that each kitchen has its own grammar, with its layout and linear repetition of the practices exhibited by the users. With the increase in social use, the kitchen turns into both a place of memory and a theater-kitchen status where individuals exhibit their identity performances. Additionally, the research discovered that there have been significant changes in the social use of the kitchen; For example, one of them was the finding that the image of the kitchen associated with women is gradually disappearing.
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