Vanina Leschziner
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780804787970
- eISBN:
- 9780804795494
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804787970.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
This book is about the creative work of chefs at elite restaurants in New York City and San Francisco. Based on interviews with chefs and observation of their work in restaurant kitchens, the book ...
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This book is about the creative work of chefs at elite restaurants in New York City and San Francisco. Based on interviews with chefs and observation of their work in restaurant kitchens, the book examines how and why chefs make choices about the dishes they put on their menus, and how they develop a culinary style. To answer the questions, the book analyzes chefs’ career paths, culinary classifications and categories, how chefs develop their culinary styles and reflectively manage their authorship, cognitive patterns and work processes involved in creating food, and status constraints. Elite chefs face competing pressures to create a distinctive and original culinary style, and conform to tradition as they navigate market forces to run a profitable business. They must make choices, and these limit their autonomy over time, because they constrain the dishes and career moves they can make in the future. Chefs occupy positions in a culinary field through their culinary styles, status, and social networks, and make choices about their food and career moves from such positions. In more general terms, the logic of creation of cultural products is embedded in the positions individuals occupy in a field. This book is about the process of creation, and complements an organizational analysis of the world of high cuisine with a phenomenological examination of chefs’ work. It uses the case study of high cuisine to analyze, more generally, how people in creative occupations navigate a context rife with uncertainty, high pressures, and contradicting forces.Less
This book is about the creative work of chefs at elite restaurants in New York City and San Francisco. Based on interviews with chefs and observation of their work in restaurant kitchens, the book examines how and why chefs make choices about the dishes they put on their menus, and how they develop a culinary style. To answer the questions, the book analyzes chefs’ career paths, culinary classifications and categories, how chefs develop their culinary styles and reflectively manage their authorship, cognitive patterns and work processes involved in creating food, and status constraints. Elite chefs face competing pressures to create a distinctive and original culinary style, and conform to tradition as they navigate market forces to run a profitable business. They must make choices, and these limit their autonomy over time, because they constrain the dishes and career moves they can make in the future. Chefs occupy positions in a culinary field through their culinary styles, status, and social networks, and make choices about their food and career moves from such positions. In more general terms, the logic of creation of cultural products is embedded in the positions individuals occupy in a field. This book is about the process of creation, and complements an organizational analysis of the world of high cuisine with a phenomenological examination of chefs’ work. It uses the case study of high cuisine to analyze, more generally, how people in creative occupations navigate a context rife with uncertainty, high pressures, and contradicting forces.
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