Understanding culinary innovation as relational: Insights from Tarde's relational sociology |
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Authors: | Miriam Feuls |
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Affiliation: | Institut für Theorie und Praxis der Kommunikation, Fakult?t Gestaltung – Universit?t der Künste Berlin, Germany |
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Abstract: | This article argues that a relational view of innovation opens up new perspectives of examining and explaining how novelty develops in creative industries. Although many researchers have given time to this topic, a theoretically grounded concept of relational innovation remains undeveloped within the literature. To address this issue, I set out to offer a framework informed by Gabriel Tarde's relational sociology, by re‐interpreting this sociology with regard to practice theory. By applying this framework in an empirical study of haute cuisine, I identify three processes of innovating at varying degrees of novelty (repeating, adapting, and differentiating). By relating those processes in the form of practices‐nets, I show that innovating is not a linear development process, but that a culinary innovation emerges in between relations of everyday practices that define and transform its value. I hope, in this way, to contribute to a more complex and subtle understanding of culinary innovation as relational. |
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