Re-imagining the kitchen as a site of memory

Bibliographic Data

ID3977830
AuthorsAngela Meah (0000-0001-7177-2890, University of Sheffield), Peter Jackson (0000-0002-6002-8166)
Year2016
Volume17
Issue4
Pages511-532
Publication date2016-05-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial & Cultural Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-9365 • E-ISSN: 1470-1197
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14649365.2015.1089587
OpenAlexW2097881529
LanguageEN
Citations received36
References cited81

Extending the focus of previous geographical research on public spaces of remembering, this paper demonstrates the ways in which memory work also takes place in private domestic spaces. The paper draws on a combination of life history and ethnographic research undertaken in Northern England, examining kitchens as a specific lieu de mémoire, showing how they serve as places where valued items are displayed and material artefacts are curated as part of the construction and reproduction of personal memories and familial identities. Using ethnographic and visual evidence from two case study households, the paper demonstrates the role of material artefacts in curating the past and materialising memory. Additionally, life history interviews with older women reveal narratives of everyday cooking practices which seemingly contradict popular discourses of the past, questioning conventional ideas about the distorted nature of nostalgia. In combination, our data represent complex narratives in which the past can be seen as infusing the present, and where present-day concerns are revealed as actively shaping public discourses which favour a return to an idealised past, which may have little bearing on people's actual lived experience

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Ethnography · Everyday life · Focus (optics · Literature · Memory work · Narrative · Participant observation · Social science · Sociology · Visual arts · Anthropology · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Gender Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Religious Tourism and Spaces

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