Food, passion and marginalised young people : technologies of the self in Jamie\u27s kitchen

Abstract

A passion for food that is understood in certain ways – slow, organic, not industrialised – plays a central role in the drama of the successful and popular Jamie’s Kitchen (2002) and Jamie’s Kitchen Australia (2006). Large parts of the drama in these shows revolve around an apparent lack of passion that is displayed by the marginalised, unemployed young people that are the central characters in this story. In this paper I examine the ways in which these accounts of food, passion, and the training of marginalised young people expose some of the challenges and opportunities faced by marginalised young people as they seek to transition into the uncertain and risky labour markets of 21st century capitalism. I argue that Michel Foucault’s (1988) concept of technologies of the self enables us to understand passion, and its particular manifestations in Jamie’s Kitchen, and in the training of marginalised young people, as a powerful technology of self transformation. The drama of Jamie’s Kitchen suggests that as a technology of the self passion for food promises to provide precarious, possibly temporary, forms of salvation, meaning and purpose for the young people engaged in the Fifteen Foundation’s social enterprise transitional labour market program