Food/ Labour

This week’s lecture was very interesting and useful as it related a lot to my activity, cooking.

Arendt (1958) describes Labour is the activity which corresponds to the biological process of the human body, whose spontaneous growth, metabolism, and eventual decay are bound to the vital necessities produced and fed into the life process by labour. The human condition of labour is life itself.

Labour is important to everything we do. Labour is never finished it never reaches a point of completion, it never comes to an end. For example, in cooking it is necessary- having eaten, we must eat again. Labour can be said to be activity that is done in order to be undone.

Therefore labour involves those things that we do which generally have no trace, because we have done it over and over again in order to exist. Everyday somebody in my flat cooks a meal and then does the dishes, therefore there is no trace. This continues day after day because of necessity and gives us a sense of achievement but it can also be seen as futile as it has to be done again and again, day after day. From this necessity and futility are fundamental features of labour.

Green (1968), describes the relationship between labour and food as “the gathering of nourishment, however, is not only necessary; it is also endless. Once done it must be done again. Answering as it does to the requirements of life itself, it can end with only the end of life. The purpose of this activity is to provide for the seeds of consumption: food is taken from the earth, after all in order to be consumed. ”

This quote is relevant to me as we have a vegetable garden, grow fruit trees and I am involved in the production of meat and milk on our farm by caring for the animals. These provide food for us to survive and the gathering of nourishment is not only necessary but also endless.

Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition (2nd ed.). Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Green, T. F. (1968). Work, leisure and the American schools. New York: Random House.