Cooking Cooperatively at “Shun”Robert C Marshall, Anthropology Department, Western Washington University,

Bellingham, WA 98225V. Analysis  

A. If culture is symbolic, so is how people cook B. Symbols pattern public action based on local, interested knowledge rather than communication encoded, disinterested meanings C. Technical knowledge, tropical associations and strategic action all fuse in symbols  D. Multi-vocality of symbols allows concerted action without

1. An explicit consensual interpretation or

gloss of the “meaning” of the action, or

2. Belying strategic “plausible deniability” E. Shun’s cooks cook with

1. a high degree of energy, enthusiasm, skill and mutual confidence in a setting in which

2. acts of aggressive egoism are forestalled and

3. accusations of aggressive egoism are avoided

I.   Who is Shun?A.  14 middle-aged, middle-income

housewives, allB.  Members of Seikatsu Club Consumer

Co-operative, who have startedC.  A worker owned and managed lunch

delivery restaurant (shidashi bentoya)

D.  Dedicated to high quality, wholesome, home cooking, and who work as

E.  A self-managed, egalitarian, part-time labor force.

II. How does Shun cook?

A.  Cooks often offer a taste while cooking, take a taste when asked, make a comment or a suggestion, act onthat suggestion or ask a second cook.

B. When asked, they deny this practice any importance; it has become

routine.C.  They make up the next day’s menu

collectively after eating lunch.D.  As each cook arrives in the morning,

she chooses the dish she will cook.E. Every combination of cooks, from 4 to

12,

1. Cooks any of 200 dishes 2. Without written recipes 3. In batches of 50 to 300 servings4. From menus they did not make and5. Ingredients they did not buy.

III.  What are some results of cooking this way?

A.  No bossesB.   No starsC.  High mutual confidenceD.  Consistent characteristic taste

IV.  How does cooking this way reproduce Shun’s

practice?

A.  Cooks monitor each other’s cookingB.  Cooks monitor each other’s

egalitarianismC.  Simultaneously withD.  Plausible deniably that they monitor.

VI. Conclusions

A. How subtle, to demonstrate one another’s commitment to egalitarian cooking by

offering one’s dishes to each other’s judgment.

B. How effective, to build into Shun’s cooking practice a sort of inverted Fordism, to

mutually and simultaneously monitor both

1. individual commitment to collective practice and ethos, and

2. Quality control in a highly variable labor force

3. Tacitly

C. These data were gathered in 1994, Shun’s fourth

year in business. Shun continues in 2004,prospering thru more than a decade ofstagnation in the wider economy.

Cooking at Shun: preparing a feast

AcknowledgementsSocial Science Research CouncilFulbright ProgramBureau for Faculty Research, WWU Department of Anthropology, WWU

Shun’s cramped kitchenThese photographs are all from a catering job Shun won by bid, the result of their decision to extend their capacity.

Food for a feast

One of twelve festive tables

Setting out the feast food

Dessert dumplings