Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic research on people’s kitchens in German cities, this paper explores the particular performative construction of sociality, identity claims and the agendas underlying the provision of food connected to the political project of the people's kitchen.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is an ethnographic inquiry into public provisions of food operating under the labels of Volxküche, Küfa (kitchen for all), or VoKü in Germany.

The phenomenon known as people's kitchens may be described as places, where are person may get a meal - often vegetarian or vegan - for an affordable price or just a small donation. Similarly to its predecessor, the soup kitchen, it is the intention that everybody should be able to purchase a warm meal and consume it in the company fellow eaters. Most likely a child of the 1980s, the people's kitchen started as secular and often distinctly political projects. Consquently, their habitat seems to be left wing and alternative spheres as they are usually based in collective and/or self-managed engagements (information stores or autonomous centres). While offering hunger relief is an important aspect of a people's kitchen, the gathering and the construction of community is often perceived as standing in the centre of it. Paying heed to its initial beginnings a people's kitchen may create the utopian place of sociality enabling political discourse and the collective experience of having a shared meal. As the idea spread to more mundane places, raises the question how images, concepts and actual practices connected to people's kitchens did change.

Drawing on ethnographic data from people's kitchens in German cities, this paper explores the performative construction of sociality, identity claims and the agendas underlying the provision of food connected to the political project of the people's kitchen.