"Fazendo do limão uma limonada sofisticada” - Generificação e racialização do cozinhar/comer de gestoras negras no (re)organizar do espaço periférico

Abstract

This research aimed to understand the (re)organization of peripheral spaces in the context of daily disturbances from the dynamics of gendering and racialization of cooking/eating practices. The theoretical frame of reference is based on the theory of practice with a focus on ordinary management and everyday practices. Narratives of black female ordinary managers were captured and later analyzed using the technique called narrative dialogic, seeking dialogue with the voices that contributed to the research, which are the ordinary subjects and also with the readers, assuming that intersubjectivity and reflexivity compose the analyses. The research findings showed the kitchen as a central organizational space for understanding the peripheries, even if sometimes invisibilized and silenced; the heterogeneous apprehension of culinary know-how; the dynamic articulation between tactical and strategic practices for survival purposes. These practices range from the mobilization of domestic spaces for income generation, the employment of family members and friends from the community, to the strengthening of sociability networks with family members, friends, and neighbors who form the clientele. The narratives also showed that the pandemic was not constituted as an extraordinary phenomenon in the daily life of the peripheral spaces, but as a fissure surrounded by many other troubles. Empirically, this study contributes by showing that organizing in the peripheries and slums is as heterogeneous as are the spaces experienced and produced daily. Theoretically, the contributions come from the observation that the practices produce hybrid spaces that mix the private with the public and sociability with business. Moreover, organizing is shown as a situated practice constituted by the analytical categories of gender, race and class. In this sense, the neutrality considered in most studies in the field of Administration is flawed because organizing is imbricated in the bodies and spaces. There is an advance in the understanding of the intersections of plasticity between peripheral and central spaces, with the dynamics of racialization and gendering crossing these spaces.