Status, solidarity and social mobility in domestic space : a comparative study of kitchens, cooking and culinary practice in Ile-Ife, Nigeria

• Main Author: Ekundayo, O. O.
• Published: University College London (University of London) 2007
• Subjects: 747.7
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.602820

The thesis explores how three prominent themes in social relationships - namely, status, solidarity and social mobility - are manifested in different lifestyle settings, by analysing the dynamics of culinary practice within the domestic space, based on an ethnographic study of seventy five households from the mid 1990s in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Many ethnographic studies identify the kitchen as a gendered space, and argue that because gender defines status and power relations in society, such distinctions will be manifested in the way space was designed and used. A gendered space is therefore a status space. The purpose of this study is show how status is manifested in space, and to measure this manifestation by analysing the distribution of culinary practices in space. The sample cuts across the socio-economic strata of Ile-Ife, and within these neighbourhoods, people live in two distinct spatial patterns, whereby one shares their domestic space with other households, while the other lives separately from other households. By using a combination of architectural morphology tools based on the space syntax theory and descriptive statistics, the study analyses the shared presence of persons, objects, activities, and food in space in order to measure the interrelationship between space and social status. The study found that there was a tendency for the status of variables to be influenced by other variables that shared the same spatial environment. The study found that higher status culinary activities and objects were associated with segregated spaces in shared accommodation, which suggests that segregation correlates with exclusivity. However, in the modern self-contained households, higher status activities took place in integrated spaces and in this sense fostered inclusion with the family. Socially, the findings suggests that there is a convergence of social positions and blurring of age and gender role boundaries in relation to culinary activity, with increased socioeconomic status and social mobility of women.