Who works, eats

open-air kitchens in Luanda's urban space (1960-1970)

Abstract

With the internationalization of the economy from the 1950s onwards, a decade in which a global food pattern was forming, Africans began to be integrated into the urban wage labour market. Consequently, they were seen as economic agents subject to new consumption habits and inserted into social framing strategies, which were adjustable to a colonial classification that was spatially mirrored, demarcating the lines of a territoriality. By defending food consumption as a dynamic expression of a territorial experience,this article aims to highlight the resistance movement by the African population from the conformation of a specific space of sociability and commensality: the outdoor kitchens. To this end, based on a theoretical and methodological framework that is inscribed in geography, anthropology and social history, we collate information presented in different types of sources, including periodicals, medical-nutritional documents and socio-anthropological investigations prepared by the colonial authorities. By relying on the methodology of Oral History, we also relied on interviews conducted with Angolans who experienced living in Luanda at that time.