Better Kitchen,Broken Life

This study focused on typical unit communities and families,integrated qualitative methods such as interviews and observations,and deeply described the kitchen practices in the daily life of families to figure out how individuals carry out daily life practices and social interactions in the kitchen and interact with a grander institution.Through the perspective of "kitchen works" which combines space and practice,comprehensively examine the interaction among society,kitchen/housing and individual/family,and study how urban residents interact and reorganize their daily life in the process of social transformation to rediscover the individual’s experience in everyday life.This study provides an integrated method—tracking and depicting the daily life of the researcher’s family,and at the same time combining other typical unit community families as a supplementary comparison.It takes the individual reflexivity in the theory of individualization as the core,combines the microscopic approach of behavioral research,and absorbs and reflects on the methods of hometown folklore,autoethnography and interactive-folk-recording.This study first reviews the structural changes of urban residents under the influence of the housing institution reform since the 1970 s,shows the process of the kitchen becoming a natural part of the house,and connects the history of daily life.Secondly,around the practical meaning of the kitchen,it discusses how the kitchen in the house is used,and other places with similar functions and meanings.Afterwards,the perspective is shifted from the perspective of the interaction between public power,the market and the community(individuals)to the daily life of the family,and the negotiations in the kitchen are shown from the perspective of kitchen practice during the Spring Festival.After reviewing the experience of the kitchen in the daily life of three generations,this paper proposes a core characteristic of the kitchen in the daily life of urban families after the founding of PRC in 1949—commonality.This kind of commonality starts from buildings and objects,and then affects people’s behavior and life style.It is prominently manifested in two aspects-the sharing of space and the sharing of experience.