Affordances part 2!!

There are three more aspects of affordances that were not mentioned below. These are aesthetics, spirituality and health. These are three pretty important aspects for us to grasp to fully understand the affordances of cooking. So here’s hoping I can explain to you and help myself understand these important concepts.

Aesthetics- I was struggling to comprehend what this word really meant. Good old un-trusty Wikipedia helped me out by explaining that it refers to...

“A branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty.^[1] It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste.^[2] More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as "critical reflection on art, culture and nature" (2011).

When looking at the aesthetics of cooking we refer to things like- the presentation of the food, how it looks, how it tastes, the smell, the color of the food, its invitingness, how the food is culturally fitting.

You can look at aspects of cooking like the appreciation from others, the satisfaction in communication, the noisy and clattering of someone banging away in the kitchen, the beauty of fulfilling hunger, feeling just right, and even to that state of frustrated perfectionism.

Through cooking you can create absolute beauty, a wonderful work of art, which can be admired for a minute before satisfying our need to eat. Mahy describes how cooking can be and is art through the story ‘A work of art’. Mahy (1988) writes “when I saw it, I said that’s art! I said, that’s what art is about. It’s a cake – yes – but not just a cake. It’s a statement in its own right. My dear, it’s got such passionate equilibrium.”

Spirituality- This is a very difficult concept to explain. Spirituality can be defined and mean a whole lot of different things. In relation to affordances I found a definition off Wikipedia that states that spirituality is “an inner path. It refers to a person's efforts to discover the essence of his/her being or nature; or to the deepest values and meanings by which people live. Spirituality is often experienced as a source of inspiration or orientation in life”.  So in a sum up sentence spirituality is about looking at what is the potential for feeling connected with the universe through an activity, mine being cooking.

This could be things like...

·         Cooking providing a sense of meaning.

·         It provides an opportunity to serve others

·         Gratitude in giving/receiving and making for others.

·         It has sacred meaning

·         It can make people be at peace

·         Can provide connections to the land, through using and cooking food grown in the earth.

·         Celebration

·         Connection to ancestors through recipes and the passing on of knowledge

·         Belonging

·         Being connected to cyclical time – different foods are cooked at different times of the year, also different foods are grown.

·         Values/ethics of the activity/values eg- underpinning endurance and waiting for a meal

·         Grace before meals – part of gratitude

Health- In cooking, health is a major aspect and is constantly drained into society. The idea of healthy eating is pushed into our society, yet so many people out there do not do it. Food can provide energy, it gives vitamin and iron to the body, has antibiotic properties, can make you fat if you choose to eat the wrong foods, it can control conditions, and also can cause you to become sick. Cooking can be used in the way of health as a relaxing/de-stressing tool, can be therapeutic to an individual but this can also be in reverse for some people eg- increase stress etc. There are also other aspects like hygiene eg- washing hands before cooking and the prevention of catching bugs eg- keeping meat refrigerated and making sure it is well cooked so people to not catch things like salmonella and food poisoning. Food must be consumed in order for a person to live. Visser (1986) states “Food is ‘everyday’-it has to be, or we would not survive for long”.  For people to carry on living we must put this fuel, being food into our body in order to keep kicking.

References-

Mahy, M. (1988). The door in the air and other stories. London: JM Dent & Sons Ltd.

Visser, M. (1986). Much depends on dinner. New York: Grove Press.

Wikipedia. (2011). Aesthetics. Retrieved form http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetics

Wikipedia. (2011). Spirituality. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality