Leschziner, Vanina. Recipes for success: culinary styles, professional careers, and institutional patterns in the field of high cuisine. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3WM1DTG
DescriptionThis study uses the case of high cuisine in the settings of New York City and San Francisco to investigate the social logic of creation. Drawing on data from ethnographic research with forty-five elite chefs --from in-depth interviews and observation in restaurants kitchens--, I explore how individuals respond to social context in their endeavors to create cultural products. I examine chefs' culinary styles, status, professional trajectories, creational processes, and relations with others in their field to explain (one) their conscious choices about their dishes and their careers, (two) their relations with peers, and (three) their reflexive understandings of their work and social relations.
I analyze the particular characteristics of cuisine as an area of activity (the mode of cultural production) to explain the patterning of culinary creation, and demonstrate that such patterning is associated to status. Categorizing elite chefs in middle, upper-middle and high levels of status, I show that those with upper-middle status are more likely to innovate than others. But chefs reflexively understand their styles, and thereby legitimate themselves, in ways which may be dissociated from external perceptions. There are various risks and rewards both for creating in a particular style and for making particular legitimacy claims, and such risks and rewards are differentially distributed in the field. With constraints of an opposite nature, middle and high-status actors are more likely to represent their styles in ways that may be dissociated from external perceptions.
Chefs focus on one of the two salient principles of creation in their representations of their styles: the principle of excellence in culinary creation, or market constraints. Actors prioritize a particular principle and make claims that are consistent with their self-concepts. Through their theories of themselves, they develop their practical theories of action, and thereby reduce organizational complexity, navigate the field, and make conscious decisions for their restaurants and careers. I show that chefs' culinary styles, relations with peers, and reflexive understandings are all aspects of a creational enterprise that are intrinsically connected in an organizational field, and they must therefore all be analyzed to explain the social logic of creation.