Recipes for Theory Making

Abstract

This is a paper about philosophical inquiry and cooking. In it, I suggest that thinking about cooking can illuminate our understanding of other forms of inquiry. Specifically, I think it provides us with one way to circumvent the dilemma of absolutism and relativism. The paper is divided into two sections. In the first, I sketch the background against which my project is situated. In the second, I develop an account of cooking as inquiry, by exploring five aspects of recipe creation and use.

Food as a daily art: ideas for its use as a method in development practice

“…By virtue of these qualities, food helps give words to the internal perspective needed to shift power away from outside agencies. In her feminist exploration of food as a method of inquiry, Heldke (1988) laments how conventional western philosophers have regarded women's activities such as cooking to be irrelevant and thereby rendered them invisible, and in contrast, she illuminates the philosophical significance of cooking.…”

“…Examining food is not new as a method of inquiry. It has long been an important tool for anthropologists, reflective of their commitment to documenting the "everyday" (Heldke 1988, Sutton 2001. It is much less common as a tool for action-oriented research.…”

Cooking as Inquiry: A Method to Stir Up Prevailing Ways of Knowing Food, Body, and Identity

“…In an essay titled "Recipes for Theory Making," Heldke (1992b) asks, "Could it ever make sense to think of cooking as a form of inquiry?" (p. 251).…”

Where Are All the Pragmatist Feminists?

“…7 7 Among those not mentioned elsewhere in this article are Ayim (1983), Heldke (1987; 1988), Miranda (1980), and Seigfried (1984a; 1989). …”