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Understanding culinary innovation as relational: Insights from Tarde's relational sociology
Author(s) -
Feuls Miriam
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
creativity and innovation management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.148
H-Index - 60
eISSN - 1467-8691
pISSN - 0963-1690
DOI - 10.1111/caim.12257
Subject(s) - novelty , sociology , set (abstract data type) , value (mathematics) , epistemology , process (computing) , relational theory , knowledge management , psychology , computer science , social psychology , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , machine learning , programming language , operating system
This article argues that a relational view of innovation opens up new perspectives of examining and explaining how novelty develops in creative industries. Although many researchers have given time to this topic, a theoretically grounded concept of relational innovation remains undeveloped within the literature. To address this issue, I set out to offer a framework informed by Gabriel Tarde's relational sociology, by re‐interpreting this sociology with regard to practice theory. By applying this framework in an empirical study of haute cuisine, I identify three processes of innovating at varying degrees of novelty (repeating, adapting, and differentiating). By relating those processes in the form of practices‐nets, I show that innovating is not a linear development process, but that a culinary innovation emerges in between relations of everyday practices that define and transform its value. I hope, in this way, to contribute to a more complex and subtle understanding of culinary innovation as relational.