« Le dîner est servi ! » La cuisine comme lieu de captivité à Rio de Janeiro au XIXe siècle

Abstract

This article studies the evolution of the kitchen in Rio de Janeiro’s houses as domestic spaces during the nineteenth century, seeking to articulate their spatial organization, their characteristic material culture and the agents living there. It argues that the transformations of their spatiality were linked to the rise of a new social habitus – among the wealthier classes, that valued strict norms of etiquette, the use of sophisticated artifacts and the specialization of housework. But it also supports a process of bodies’ separation between masters and servants, since the nineteenth-century kitchen was a space of captivity where enslaved men and women worked, circulated, and lived.

Keywords

• kitchen
• habitus
• slavery
• Brazilian Empire
• 19th century
• Rio de Janeiro