Anna Cherenovych – University of Opole, Poland
Keywords
arts-based action research, intercultural communication
Abstract
Adapting to new cultural environment where a person is a stranger is challenging. It needs involvement and communication in different spheres of life. There are plenty of situations in which intercultural communication happens: shops, public institutions, cultural events, etc. Interaction presented there happens according to rules and norms and rarely anyone challenges this order. Attempting to learn the cultural peculiarities of cuisine and associated rituals reduces the ‘strangeness’ felt by cultural outsiders. It also invokes realization and looking for common features in daily life routine, which positively influences communication.Food and cooking is proposed as an element of the culture within the social system that reproduces it. Thus, food rituals are taken as sort of specific code or language that has to be heard in order to better understand another culture. Barthes R. (1997) states that food is a primary need of every person. This need is highly structured. Nourishment is involved into semiosis while considering resources, tools, techniques and habitus used during cooking and eating processes (Barthes, 1997). There are plenty of theoretical and practical studies of how to approach other cultures and how to make intercultural communication efficient. Nowadays different interdisciplinary methods are involved for getting new data. One of the methods that combines elements of art and social sciences is arts-based action research. According to Wilson (2014, p.146) “arts-based action research is a blanket term that refers to the use of the arts, in various forms, as the basis for inquiry, intervention, knowledge production and/or information sharing. As a research method, arts-based approaches consist of the merging of the conventions of ‘traditional’ qualitative methodologies with those of the arts to allow for deeper research insight, interpretation, meaning making and creative expression, and alternative knowledges and ways of knowing.” (Wilson, 2014, p.146) My research is based on transforming arts-based action research to study cultures through food and communication between those involved in the process. Proposed method of research is aimed not only at elaborating upon specific arts-based action research, but also to invoke engagement in intercultural communication. Given research is specified to organisation of cooking and eating sessions between Poles and foreigners. Preparatory stage (looking for volunteers to take part in the research) for each meeting is to compile significant part of research and to be used as data for future analysis of results. Aims of research: To integrate people from different cultures and make conclusions on their interaction;Observing cooking process peculiarities by active involvement, interview questions, reactions;To experiment with cooking format of interview as method of researching intercultural communication, interaction. So, proposed method of data collection has big learning potential and can elaborate on already existed theories:Taste is something social. Anna Matyja (2013) states that first definitions of taste appear in primary group that is family, then socialization takes part in secondary group till the end of the life. Secondary socialization can be represented by workplace, marriage, etc. (Matyja, 2013); Cooking as creative process, form of art;Way of food reproduction changed social structures (Agricultural revolution);Capitalism and food:overconsumption, food wasting, ecological aspects of food industry, beauty standards; It is claimed by Derrick (1967) that different groups of food that are divided up by their purpose and meaning: cultural superfoods, prestige foods, sympathetic foods, physiological foods. (Derrick, 1967)Cooking as bodily experience (habitus);Globalisation of food.
Bibliography
Barthes, Roland. 1997 [1961]. Toward a psychosociology of contemporary food consumption. In C. Counihan & P. Van Esteric (eds.), Food and culture: A reader, 20–27. New York & London: Routledge.
Derrick B. Jelliffe (1967) Parallel Food Classifications in Developing and Industrialized Countries. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 20, Issue 3, March 1967, Pages 279–281, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/20.3.279
Matyja A. (2013) Socjalizacja a żywienie – analiza socjologiczna. In Tobiasz-Adamczyk B. (Eds.) Od socjologii medycyny do socjologii żywienia. Kraków: WUJ
Wilson, Ciann & Flicker, Sarah (2014) Arts-based action-research. In Coghlan, D. & Brydon-Miller, M. The SAGE encyclopedia of action research (Vols. 1-2). London : SAGE Publications Ltd