Papers by Chad Borkenhagen
Social Studies of Science, 2017
This article examines how scientific knowledge drives creativity in the small but influential cul... more This article examines how scientific knowledge drives creativity in the small but influential culinary movement of ‘modernist cuisine’. Originating in the mid-1990s, modernist cuisine began with a small group of avant-garde chefs using science to produce wildly innovative culinary creations. Since then, many of the movement’s innovations, as well as its more general ‘science-based’ approach to cooking, have gained adoption among a diverse range of culinary professionals. But while science has enabled modernist chefs to produce a wide array of innovations and refinements, the group’s embrace of scientific values poses a potential threat to the subjective, intuition-driven logic of culinary creativity. Using data gathered through interviews and participant observation, I describe how modernist chefs navigate the potential challenges of using science in a creative field. I find that advocates of modernist cuisine address these challenges by adopting two separate rhetorical repertoires – one emphasizing science-based cooking’s advantages over traditional methods, and another that minimizes the differences between these approaches. Observing the strategic deployment of these repertoires illustrates the challenges to incorporating science into creative fields and reveals a complex and nuanced relationship between objectivity, evidence, and aesthetic judgement.
Poetics, 2017
Knowledge sharing is an important but understudied aspect of the formation and organization of cr... more Knowledge sharing is an important but understudied aspect of the formation and organization of creative fields. To better understand the relationship between knowledge sharing and field organization, I examine a small but influential movement within the culinary arts known as “modernist cuisine.” This movement eschews many of the protective practices that have traditionally guarded culinary innovations in favor of an open sharing model similar to how knowledge is shared in the sciences or open source software development. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and other primary resources, I find that this open mode of knowledge sharing precipitates a system of peer-based citation, whereby producers receive direct recognition for their discoveries without the endorsement of traditional tastemakers such as restaurant critics. This citation-based prestige system opens the culinary field to participation from new kinds of actors, generates new roles that are better insulated from the economic demands of traditional restaurant work, and may even influence the field’s traditional status hierarchy. These findings suggest that the way knowledge is shared plays a considerable role in the organization of fields where expertise and innovation are highly valued, and that changes in these practices can have other consequences in the field at large.
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Papers by Chad Borkenhagen