Start Date
26-5-2026 11:45 AM
End Date
26-5-2026 12:00 PM
Description
Amidst the many food system crises facing us in the 21st century – from famine as a war strategy to the retrenchment of public funding for food aid and food security – the question of hospitality might seem trivial. That said, public hospitality – service (and care) through the provision of food in commercial sites outside the home – is deeply connected to the inequalities that shape who is entitled to food, sustenance, and support in societies driven by global capitalism. Service, the “house” in which commercialized hospitality lives, is one of the largest and poorly renumerated sectors of employment in the US. Particularly since the covid pandemic, the working conditions of service workers in food have been made visible through #MeToo, fair wage, anti-tipping, and unionization campaigns. At the same time, the corporatization of upscale restaurants and the celebrity status of chef-owners has spawned management strategies such as “unreasonable hospitality,” which uses the language of community and care to convince hospitality workers to provide bespoke and extreme experiences for customers, internalizing a giving and deferential nature that evokes a Foucauldian panopticon of self-discipline and self-sacrifice in the service of the institution. The question of who is entitled, that is who can afford or have access to meals at these restaurants and therefore are deserving of bespoke care and attention – lives in juxtaposition with the experiences of the vast majority of workers and consumers. This paper explores these contradictions through media, texts, and potential alternatives.
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Included in
Hospitality and Its Discontents
Amidst the many food system crises facing us in the 21st century – from famine as a war strategy to the retrenchment of public funding for food aid and food security – the question of hospitality might seem trivial. That said, public hospitality – service (and care) through the provision of food in commercial sites outside the home – is deeply connected to the inequalities that shape who is entitled to food, sustenance, and support in societies driven by global capitalism. Service, the “house” in which commercialized hospitality lives, is one of the largest and poorly renumerated sectors of employment in the US. Particularly since the covid pandemic, the working conditions of service workers in food have been made visible through #MeToo, fair wage, anti-tipping, and unionization campaigns. At the same time, the corporatization of upscale restaurants and the celebrity status of chef-owners has spawned management strategies such as “unreasonable hospitality,” which uses the language of community and care to convince hospitality workers to provide bespoke and extreme experiences for customers, internalizing a giving and deferential nature that evokes a Foucauldian panopticon of self-discipline and self-sacrifice in the service of the institution. The question of who is entitled, that is who can afford or have access to meals at these restaurants and therefore are deserving of bespoke care and attention – lives in juxtaposition with the experiences of the vast majority of workers and consumers. This paper explores these contradictions through media, texts, and potential alternatives.