Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the practices and ideas of gender in a sector of family-operated food manufacturing in South Korea, analyzing how Korean gendered notions of skill, food knowledge, and family relations are lived in shop space as well as in the organizational practices of the sector.

Paper long abstract:

Processing rice into pastry or cakes (tteok in Korean) is a food manufacturing industry in South Korea in which the majority of production is carried out by small family-operated businesses, often kept by a tandem of a married couple, with family and kin members and wage employees helping only during busy seasons. Tteok is considered a traditional food in Korea, and peak production and consumption take place during festivities and in rituals, both traditional and modern.

This paper, based on ethnographic fieldwork among practitioners in rice cake trade in South Korea for a research project investigating organizational practices of the self-employed as Korean culture of economy, discusses practices and ideas of gender in the setting of a shop space among rice cake makers as well as within the various organizations of their trade. I aim to situate the ethnographic reality of the labor and spousal existence in the business as well as my analysis into a larger frame of South Korean gendered notions of possession and use of skill, food knowledge, and family relations.

While in the grassroots level of local groupings the rice cake shops were mostly represented by husbands irrespective of the formal proprietorship, in organizations close to the formal national-level trade association, the presence of women was considerable, and much more so among the visible national elite. This I will juxtapose with and relate to the daily shared toil of wife and husband in the shop.