Foodwork as Relationality: Labour and the Creation of Culinary Placemaking
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis explores the concept of culinary placemaking through the lens of Global Political Economy (GPE), focusing on how foodwork functions as a relational practice that shapes social, cultural, and economic spaces. It examines the relationships among food, labour, and place, emphasizing the ways in which workers transform culinary environments into meaningful places through their physical, emotional, and creative contributions. Drawing on existing literature, the research highlights how neoliberal policies have commodified food and labour, leading to increased precarity and alienation for food workers. Despite these challenges, culinary workers actively resist the pressures of globalization by fostering localized food systems, emphasizing cultural and social engagement, and envisioning alternative economic models such as cooperatives and farm-to-table initiatives. This thesis finds that culinary placemaking not only resists commodification but also offers opportunities for social cohesion, cultural expression, and economic resilience. Furthermore, the research touches upon the gendered dimensions of culinary labour, demonstrating how workers navigate power dynamics within professional kitchens and community food spaces. Future research directions include exploring the evolving role of consumers in culinary placemaking, addressing labour precarity through policy interventions, and investigating how Indigenous economies contribute to decolonial approaches to food sovereignty. By situating foodwork within the broader political and economic context, this thesis contributes to a deeper understanding of the transformative potential of culinary labour in fostering inclusive, sustainable, and culturally resonant food spaces.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.043 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.010 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".