In the Kitchen: Negotiating Changing Family Roles in Costa Rica

Where once inequalities within the Costa Rican household were largely gender-related, recent political and economic shifts have created intra-gender, inter-generational tensions—a generational conflict inside of gender performance. Grown, middle-class daughters often stay in their parents’ homes and attend university or work, fostering a situation in which multiple adult women perform domestic labor. The kitchen is a key space where Costa Rican mothers and daughters negotiate changing generational roles, where local social hierarchies are contested, and where new meanings of class evolve. Prepared meals index individuals’ creative attempts to establish authority regarding acceptable and desirable foodways. In this article I examine local understandings of traditional and modern foodways and unpack who can and cannot invoke tradition or modernity as a component of cooking and why.