Politicizing public eating spaces: the South African Spur family restaurant franchise

by Thembelihle Bongwana

Paper presented at the Seventh International Conference on Food Studies,

For: Food Policies, Politics and Culture 

26 October 2017, University of Tre, Rome

Introduction

Levi-Strauss (1969) eloquently describes food and its cooking practice as a language that defines a particular social and cultural order or hierarchy which is further broken down into different categories and hidden codes that can only be understood by those ascribing to that social group’s values and practices. Barthes (2008) refers to food as something that transcends culinary bounds, cutting through cultural and societal boundaries where means of communicating are established and codified to strengthen group ties. The study and role of food spaces and food practices in the construction of identities and as a way of comprehending how society works is pivotal in magnifying some of the not so visible and more symbolic practices around food and eating spaces.

Food almost always holds a central position within inter-group relations, when people come together, or as something that brings people together in its preparation.  Food can then be understood as a lens through which we can come to study and understand social phenomena, eating practices and the cultural and political dynamics surrounding this. The growing cross-disciplinary scholarship on food studies reveals the centrality of food preparation and eating in shaping gendered, racialized and national identities.

However, despite the undeniable growth of public eating culture and practices characterised by flourishing restaurants on a global level, there is very little research about this in African contexts. In South Africa, for example, food studies rarely address humanities-related concerns where food cultures and food politics issues are addressed, explored and theorised better and holistically in order to broaden both then natural and human sciences scope. Most of the focus has been on food security from the perspective of development, natural science and public health related studies.

Similarly to the foods that we eat, food spaces are just as interwoven in a plurality of class, power, and race politics. These are often shaped by hegemonic exclusivist forms which either include or exclude, and promote the interests of those perceived as ‘insiders’ and elitists from the ‘outsiders’ of a specific culture. At the same time, eating communally is a pleasurable act that encourages conviviality and sociability. These are sometimes paradoxically connected to forms of exclusion, stereotyping and prejudice that social subjects come to see as natural or else fail to see at all.

Singling out the Spur as one of the most popular public eating space in South Africa, branded through stereotypes about Native Americans and “authentic” steakhouse eating, which has flourished as popular eating spaces for various South Africans as it offers food that is globalised and has also become nationalised within a South African culture, these being fries, burgers, flame grilled meat (ribs, steak and wings). Through various Spur franchises, and depending on individual positionality, individuals are able to enact, through varying performances that are shaped by the subject’s race, geography, class, ethnic, and gender identities. Therefore, food carries much more meaning, with much bigger politics which can be further interrogated, dismantled, reconstructed and applied in order to gain new insights on public eating, food spaces, and identity politics.

The Spur Imagery

The pleasure of the imagination the Spur lends itself to through representations and misrepresentations, stereotypes and beliefs around ‘othered’ cultural group identities is a problematic commodity approach. Though most Spur frequenters have come to naturalize some of its disturbing aesthetics, questions around the design and adoption of these now appropriated themes, names, symbols etc. are what ( Bongwana, 2017; Deyi, 2015 and Mulgrew, 2015) are probing further. Chavalier (2015) asserts that an “analysis of consumption patterns, taking into account the historical context and generational difference, and especially of food consumption….incorporated so deeply into social life, helps us to understand better the articulation and transformations of race and class identities”.

The restaurant uses a Native American theme, decor and branding purposes whereby the eating establishment takes great pride and self-praise as being “the official restaurant of the South African family” and one way Spur makes up for this claim is by ensuring a family oriented atmosphere through its provisioning of children’s play area. The Spur advertises itself as a vibrant place of creating great and fun memories with food that appeals to both the old and young, within a family-friendly set-up. Having capitalized on this “Family Brand”, the Spur extends this notion even beyond its customer base to include its colleagues and business partners. The Spur Corporation advocates for transformation and “has developed” a transformation strategy which seeks to support and uplift those that have been historically disadvantaged, and as a business that thrives on “family-first” values, the assumption here is that the Spur would prioritize its employees of color that have been historically disadvantaged, and further play a role in investing and the upliftment of its human capital as it so proudly proclaims on paper.

The Personal Politicized

As quotidian as the subject of food may seem, it is embedded in very complex politics of gender, nutrition, public health, agriculture, public/local/regional/national and international policy matters. The personal is always bound to intersect with the political when food is consumed outside the confines of private spaces to a restaurant. Intimate conversations are then attached to political/ public spaces with such conversations defined by cultural, gender, and class contours of our daily lives where “connections form between personal experiences and power, across cultures, classes and politics and within an invented space” (Fine & Macpherson, 1994:243).

Lewis, writes “food is also linked to feelings, agencies and pleasures that extend our conventional understandings of the dimensions of freedoms” (2015; 2017:2). Although food, is discussed across health, agriculture, food security studies, there is still limited work on, for example, the intimacy of food eating spaces, or the sense of self that are shaped by racialized, classed and nationally determined experiences of eating. Food has become a deeply politicized issue that informs every aspect of our lives and thereby influences the way in which we construct our identities, and even the way in which a particular cultural groups perceive their food choices and practices as ‘norm’ or better than other people’s food preferences. By connecting the personal (food and eating) with the political (space) one can begin to critically identify some of the normalized, hidden representations, and cultural misappropriations that inform public eating spaces.

Phull et al further argue that aspects of eating together are associated with health and economic freedom, concepts that have also been associated and framed within the parameters of middle class status.  Some other forms of meanings that can be found around convivial dining, demonstrates how the issue of pleasure is now problematized in modern society more especially around nutritional and health related disciplines. The problematizing and pathologizing of pleasurable indulgence in food practices of one’s choice as often indicated in health related studies, is problematic itself with its narrow conceptualizing that is often centered around food consumption in relation to disease, nutrition and health related risks as this view negates agency as it ultimately suggests ways that are appropriate to eat and constructs hierarchies of appropriate foods and portions to be consumed in coverted ways.

In a contemporary modern day South Africa, where heritage day is around convivial dining with meat serving as a symbolic form of cultural heritage celebration, Spur then becomes a key point during such moments of national identity patronage as a leading Steakhouse that specializes in serving flame grilled meat in an upmarket and cosmopolitan public eating space as opposed to the other most common form of ‘braaing’ that is synonymous with flame grilling or American concept known as barbequing. The idea of a national heritage and or braai day was initiated by Jan ‘Jan Braai’ Scannell, and was later formally adopted in 2008 by the National Heritage council with the idea of unifying all South Africans irrespective of their diverse cultural, racial, political backgrounds towards a solidified national identity (www. sahistory.org.za).

Public Eating Culture in Relation to Power

As Chevalier (2015) states, there is so much to be learnt through food, and that it also functions as a symbol of identity, representative of a particular cultural group. People come to inhabit public eating spaces as consumers buying into a particular middle, or upper-class culture that comprises of commodified, capitalist, aesthetic patterns. Hooks (2006) argues for the necessity to engage the spatial element of discourse especially in respect to issues of spatial segregation, poverty, exclusion and privilege and how these spaces come to be constructed in relation and contrast to each other; a strategy of discriminatory power that becomes useful in the conceptualization of the social history of restaurant formations and cultures.

Social spaces also connote symbolic meanings and power which, due to its inability to easily detect as due its overt and very subtle nature, may erupt in violent forms especially where there is symbolic power which functions covertly to legitimize divisions and prejudices. An analysis of power paints a picture of historically entrenched unequal power relations between men and women where power is seen as a commodity that is disproportionately owned by others or some groups and used against others. This process then translates into the exclusion of others that fall outside the properties of power (Kerfoot & Knights, 1994).

Translating this into a South African Spur restaurant context where similar power and symbolic dynamics play out, Bongwana (2017) wrote a blog essay that speaks to how symbolic forms of violence can break out in public eating spaces due to intolerance and unacceptability of others for others belonging in different racial, cultural, and ethnic groups. As earlier indicated, food is a language, a form of communication and a universal tool that binds those that share in the same social classifications. Bongwana draws on a violent incident that took place at one of the Spurs in Johannesburg to illustrate a point on symbolic violence.  The violent incident that took place at the Texamo Spur reveals an altercation between two parents, where the white man threatens to beat up the black mother. Though racism is not a foreign concept in South Africa, the incident did raise a significant, yet symbolic brand of violence and racism that has found its way into public eating spaces that is not so detectable in major institutions of food that masquerade behind a false brand of “national identity”. The emphasis on Spur as masquerading as a joyous rainbow nation family restaurant illustrates the prejudices and intolerances that continue to be perpetuated on people belonging to minority groups even in spaces that are advertised through images and messages of a joyous national identity.

Bourdieu (1987; 1991) defines symbolic power and violence as a manifestation of social class differences where boundaries between lifestyles may produce social tensions. Congruent life statuses work to reinforce symbolic boundaries between individuals occupying different locations in the class structure. The Spur incident reinforced some of these boundaries between its customers by reminding them of the differing positions they occupy according to a social hierarchical ordering. A lot of class, racial and gender issues were invoked by the incident. It is then crucially important to understand the operation of the capitalist economy and its relationship with class, racial, inter-cultural, and gender categories that are socially constructed within a very capitalist driven system and its implications thereof.

Conclusion

In post-apartheid South Africa, the new forms of segregation that have emerged are categorised as economic, social and class forms with clear spatial divisions between the rich, privileged versus the poor, marginalised and disenfranchised whereby access is only mediated or facilitated through some form of submission or service/labour exchange throughout these differential spaces which always favour the class elevated and elitist groups.

(Hook & Vrdoljak: 1996, 242-245).  Through access cards and membership cards similarly to the ones regular members ascribe to at Spur Family Restaurants. One is then guaranteed exclusive social status “and the assurance of a peaceful, quality lifestyle” (Hook & Vrdoljak, 1996: 246). These measures are all symbolic and bear similar resemblance to the exclusionary practices of the then apartheid regime of South Africa which legalised such racist, discriminatory and dehumanising segregation laws with its impact needing further examination and intensive, multi-layered deconstruction and analyses.

Questions about whose culture, heritage and identity the Spur represents need to be microscopically unpacked in order to flesh out some of the most hidden meanings about the culture and practices of the Spur and what these actually convey. As issues of identity and national building are pertinent in this family restaurant that is very popular in South African public eating, even with its obvious western roots that locate it to North American culture which found itself in South African popular culture. Deyi (2015) states that nothing about the Spur is Native North American apart from its the use of a Native American chief on its logo with both (Deyi, 2015; Mulgrew, 2015) parallel arguments suggesting that the Spur, its imagery and branding is racist and capitalistic . Therefore, vigorous interrogations on the Spur, questions around whose culture is really represented and how this culture reinforces a particular culture within the space or erases particular histories and cultural identities and to also make sense of how those that enjoy the Spur construct meanings around spatial conviviality and identity formations.

References 

Barthes, R. (2008). Towards a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption.  In Food and Culture, edited by Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik, pp. 28-35. New York, New York.

Bourdieu, P. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Trans. Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bongwana, T.  (2017). Thinking about Food and Racism in “Post-Apartheid” South Africa.  [Online] http://www.foodpoliticsandculturesproject.com/2017/05/23/thinking-about-food-and-racism-in-post-apartheid-south-africa/amp/

Chavalier, S. (2015). Food, Malls and the Politics of Consumption: South Africa’s New Middle Class. University of Pretoria: South Africa

Chuck, C., Fernandes, S.A., & Hyers, L.L. (2016). Awakening to the Politics of Food: Politicized Diet as Social Identity. Appetite 107, pp. 425-436.

Deyi, B. (2015). I Hate Spur! Africa is a Country. [Online] http://www.africaisacountry.com/author/busisiwe-deyi

Fine, M. & Macpherson, P. (1994). Over Dinner: Feminism and Adolescent Female Bodies. In Power/Gender: Social Relations in Theory and Practice. Radtke & Stam (ed). pp. 219-246.

Hook, D. (2006). Racial Stereotyping Fetishism, Fantasy, Racism. In Intergroup Relations: South African Perspectives. Ratele, K. (ed) Cape Town: Juta & Co. pp. 300-335.

Levi-Strauss, C. (1969). The Raw and the Cooked. Translated by John and Doreen Weightman. London.

Levi-Strauss, C. (2008). The Culinary Triangle. From Food and Culture: A Reader. Routledge.

Lewis, D. (2015). Gender, Feminism & Food Studies: A Critical Review. African Security Review Journal, (4).

Lewis, D. (2017). Bodies, Matter and Feminist Freedoms: Revisiting the Politics of Food. Agenda, 30 (4), Food Challenges: Feminist Theory, Revolutionary Practice

Mulgrew, N. (2015). A Taste for Strife; or, Spur in the South African Imaginary. Safundi Journal of South African and American Studies, 16 (3), pp.334-350.

Phull, S., Wills, W.  & Dickinson, A. (2015). Is It a Pleasure to Eat Together? Theoretical Reflections on Conviviality and the Mediterranean Diet. Sociology Compass 9(11), pp. 977–986

The paper is available for download ROME FINAL PAPER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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