Lasting Impressions: Ethnic Food Tour Guides and Body Work in Southwestern Sydney

Abstract

In this paper we examine the racialized and gendered body work required of guides leading ethnic food tours in southwestern Sydney, Australia. We draw on theorists who examine the materialization of race and bodies to extend concepts of intimacy, vulnerability and proximity: dominant themes in studies of occupations involving 'body work'. To date, very few studies of tour guides have examined the embodied interactions required by the work of guides. Using Ahmed's concepts of inter-embodiment and impressions, we stress that racialized bodies need to be understood as materializing in body work. In particular, we show how body work on the tours includes smiling, vocalization and shepherding and can be understood as contact with the Other. Our paper contributes to the literature on bodily interactions at work in three core ways: first, adding original empirical work on ethnic tour guiding, second, by showing how 'body work' is racialized and gendered, and finally, by exploring the relations between food and multicultural intimacies and the vulnerabilities of racialized bodies.

Eat, work, love: alternative tourists’ connection with ethnic food

“…This study hence, generates a different perspective of the skin-to-skin nuances which are invoked in previous studies about intimacy and embodiment (e.g. Swan and Flowers, 2018). Strong determinants to appreciating ethnic foods for the alternative tourists were hygiene, warmth and gestures, cleanliness and gastronomic issues.…”

“…In this paper, we reflect on two other streaks of tourism literature that meander from the conventions of “experiences.” First, Trauer and Ryan (2005) elicit the “presence” or “absence” of significant “others” in influencing the nature of intimacies with people, spaces and place as people escape from their routines. It could be such inherent notions of intimacies that tourists develop a “home of the heart” through the process of affective bonding to a place in a longitudinal perspective with enduring nostalgic impressions (Kalkstein-Silkes et al , 2008; Swan and Flowers, 2018) and happy memories (Williams et al , 1992; Trauer and Ryan, 2005). Intimacy, according to Piorkowski and Cardone (2000), constitutes four types: physical intimacy (actual contact), verbal intimacy (exchange of words and communication), spiritual intimacy (sharing values and beliefs) and intellectual intimacy (sharing of reflection and knowledge).…”

“…Second, beyond intimacy and experience, eating is also a process that reflect body or physical activity. The multisensory processes of touching, gazing, smelling, tasting, dribbling, chewing and even hearing sounds when preparing and consuming the food involved another interacting body of knowledge that unearth images, memories and secrets of ethnic food tourism (Swan and Flowers, 2018; Chez, 2011). These existing literatures suggest that ethnic food tourism transform tourists’ learning and incorporation of indigenous cultures through their subjectivity and body.…”

From female computers to male comput♂rs: Or why there are so few women writing algorithms and developing software

“…Calls for studies of embodiment in organizations (Hockey and Allen-Collinson, 2009) have resulted in studies about how bodies are: materialized through ‘body work’ (Swan and Flowers (2018); achieve conformity with certain (imagined) expectations (e.g. Rajan-Rankin, 2018); involved in sense-making (Cunliffe and Coupland, 2012); foundational to organizational ethics (Pullen and Rhodes, 2014); required to thrive in extreme conditions (Yates, Riach and Johansson, 2018); and central to qualitative research (Thanem and Knights, 2019).…”

Embodiment, care and practice in a community kitchen

“…The concept of embodiment has received increasing interest in organization studies and specifically in this journal. It has been explored through a range of perspectives such as phenomenology (e.g., Yates, Riach, & Johansson, ), the shaping of senses by social relations of power (Swan & Flowers, ) and a conceptualization as ‘being intimate with others’ which draws on Diprose's notion of corporeal generosity (Lee, ). This is a considerable and varied field of work and there is no space in the article to do it justice.…”