More-than-human assemblages and the politics of (Food) conviviality: cooking, eating, and living together in Germany

ABSTRACT

This article follows the activities of two initiatives seeking to improve living conditions of migrants in Germany. In their attempts to foster collective livability, both rely on ingenious assemblages of food, people, material objects, and their individual and collective affordances. Central in these assemblages are technological solutions the initiatives have devised to overcome the obstacles newcomers face: One uses food bikes that bypass social, physical, and bureaucratic hurdles, whereas the other employs a shipping container with a built-in kitchen that travels across Germany, leaving behind communities that cook together. We explore how material agencies operate and matter in the pursuance of convivial contexts that favor social inclusion, the latter seen as an ongoing socio-material accomplishment constituted as human and nonhuman actors interact in the world.

KEYWORDS:

• Conviviality
• foodscapes
• material agency
• migration
• more-than-human assemblages

Acknowledgement

The authors want to thank all their field consultants, in particular Constantin Bartning and Aymann Azzawi from REFUEAT, and Marieke Schöning, Rabea Haß, Jule Schröder, Victoria Hugelshofer, Sara Naffati, Clara Speer and Hameed Khasawnih from Über den Tellerand/Kitchen on the Run. This work has also been supported by the team of the FOOD2GATHER project. Our thanks go also to Regina Bendix, Rick Dolphijn, Jenny Herman, and the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable feedback on this and previous versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. https://ec.europa.eu/migrant-integration/intdossier/comparative-analysis-voluntary-and-citizens-initiatives-before-and-after-2015.

2. Where intercourse means intensive and extensive interaction and engagement.

3. This paper deals with the activities of REFUEAT as carried until 2020. From then onwards the business activities and management have undergone changes that are independent from the context of the study.

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0AFztHW4hY&t=61s; https://www.berlin.de/lb/intmig/integration-leben/helfende/artikel.596233.php?fbclid=IwAR2a-_KtY3UkRXducDEzbz8wSbn-hZW3l3MFDDNl8AyYEm42RHDRnr_8niQ.

5. During our research the owners of REFUEAT had been in conversation with a potential prospective female employee: the wife of their bread baker, who was not intended to cycle the food bikes but rather work in the eatery’s kitchen. The topic was, however, a clear point of tension between them, making apparent their disparate views on gender roles and their visions for the definition of REFUEAT’s social outreach aims.

6. On the Kitchen on the Run European tour, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSk6S2pKz5E&t=6s (accessed on June 7, 2021).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Humanities in the European Research Area and the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. under grant agreement number 769478.

Notes on contributors

Edda Starck

Edda Starck is an anthropologist based in Glasgow, Scotland. She has studied anthropology and music at the University of Aberdeen (MA, MMus) and the University of Göttingen (MA). From 2019 to 2022, she has been working as part of the HERA-funded FOOD2GATHER project researching food and migration. Edda Starck’s current research focusses on social and environmental justice, more-than-human conviviality, and environmental temporalities. Her forthcoming book “Amongst Aliens and Ghosts: More-than-human temporalities of Scottish rewilding landscapes” will be published by Göttingen University Press.

Raúl Matta

Raúl Matta is a research fellow at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, and the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (UMR 208 PaLoc). He conducts research at the intersection of the anthropology of food, heritage and cultural studies, with an emphasis on the cultural, social and political uses of food and cooking by different actors and stakeholders. He has held research and teaching appointments in France, Peru, Germany, and Mexico, and held leading roles in research projects funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the French National Research Agency (ANR), and the European Commission (HERA JRP - FOOD2GATHER). (HERA JRP/ Horizon 2020).