Domestic Kitchen Practices: Risk, Routine and Reflexivity

Our research was designed to facilitate exploration of contemporary ancillary kitchen practices, such as cleaning and ordering. We were interested in the ways these are historically constituted through household context, generational influences and the material culture of the kitchen, and culturally shaped through reflection upon shared understandings of routine, cleanliness and dangers in the kitchen. In view of the fact that we proposed to examine routine practices, we planned a small-scale ethnographic study of households. A pilot of video recordings in the kitchen was intended to assess the appropriateness of this data generation tool for recording and observing mundane practices, inducing domestic practitioner reflection on those practices and facilitating researcher interpretation.
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The research was conducted in the North East of England, and six households diverse in their life course stage participated fully in the research. This entailed semi-structured interviews with domestic practitioners and participation in visual data generation. To capture practitioners ‘at work’ in their kitchens, our preferred type of visual data was CCTV footage, and 4 households agreed to this. Three agreed to make video diaries, which entailed them in making a video recording of their kitchens and what happens there. A further six households agreed to participate in semi-structured interviews, and the life cycle profile of these households mirrored that of the others. To explore cross-generational themes relating to kitchen practices and cultures, we interviewed two mothers and one daughter living in their own households. All together, 21 interviews were conducted and a range of visual data was generated. <P>
The data were analysed with the aid of NVIVO and Excel. The database contains a complex combination of materials, discursive and visual, interview and ethnographic in character. In our analysis, we have appreciated the differences between these, yet we have attempted to build on our understanding by moving between them. This is reflected in the manner in which we have presented findings in the full report. We have here used one of the ethnographic households (the Findleys) as a framework within which to present the different themes that arose from the analysis, allowing us to also reflect on the specifics of the other households in the study.