Artful Ethnography on the dinner table: exploring intimacy, positionality, gender politics and belonging

Note: Originally this essay was written for academic purposes for my Ethnographic Research Methods but I have changed the format and added a bit more information and images.

Photo by Seckin Uysal, Me coming out of the kitchen with the deviled eggs prepared by chef Kawther Luay

For my Ethnographic Research Methods Space Enquiry, I chose the role of supper clubs as a space, specifically, the ones in the dining room I have been hosting since January 2025. As a British-Turkish art curator currently studying for my second Master's in Anthropology of Food at SOAS, so, I decided to combine the intersection of food, art, and ethnography in my Space Enquiry. From January 2025 onwards, every last Thursday of the month, I have been hosting intimate supper clubs in my living room, highlighting an artist's practice and creating a concept, a narrative, and a discourse around that artist called Freudian Bites. These supper clubs usually gather 8-9 supper-club goers who book their tickets and always include an industry professional as a guest, and the table consists of 10-12 people in total, including the artist and I (the host, observer, and curator). So far, I have organised three of these supper clubs. Still, to be focused, I will take the second one in collaboration with multidisciplinary artist Emma Witter and chef Kawther Luay as a case study.  Taking the multiplicity of my roles as a host, curator, Turkish-British woman, anthropology student, and ethnographer, I will focus on positionality, reflexivity, power, performance, and care. My space enquiry thrives in this messy middle, and several anthropologists have embraced or theorised these entanglements in ways that will deeply resonate with my work which I will delve into. In my space enquiry, there are three key questions I wanted to answer: 

• How can eating together among strangers become a form of embodied ethnography, revealing shared mythologies, memories, and desires through food, art, and conversation?

• In what ways can curated, intimate gatherings disrupt the boundaries between host and guest, artist and audience, and create fleeting moments of communitas where commonality emerges through sensuous, symbolic experience?

• Can a table become a site of transformation—psychologically, socially, and culturally—where rituals of nourishment and storytelling offer new modes of kinship, healing, and collective reflection?

A few weeks before every last Thursday of the month, I post the supper club information and ticket links on my Instagram and send it to friends to circulate. It is public but not widely circulated and promoted within a digital community if that is even a word. Since the ticket capacity is limited, the table fills fast, and there is a balanced mix of people I know professionally and personally, including some I have never met before, but we have common threads. This format reminds me of Micheal Jackon's intersubjectivity, common humanity (Jackson, 2002: pp. 333-335), and how people find meaning through shared practices. Jackson argues that storytelling, food, and ritual are ways we navigate between self and others—finding common ground in lived experience, even with strangers, fostering deep connections, if fleeting, connections. Turner's concept of communitas refers to the deep sense of togetherness and equality that can emerge in liminal spaces (Turner, 2017:pp 95-97) —those outside the ordinary (like festivals, rituals, or supper clubs). 

Emma Witter’s limited edition oysters titled “Treasure Box” which was a part of the tickets

Inspired by both Abhu-Lughod's book on Veiled Sentiments (1986), Writing Against Culture (1991) and her positionality during her ethnographic research with the Bedouin tribes and Narayan's essay on the Native Anthropologist (1993), I decided to take an auto-ethnographic approach where I as Huma Kabakci am the host, organiser, observer and "native" ethnographer in my living room. But what does native mean in this context? I hold dual citizenship; I don't feel like I belong to one nation or space even though I have settled in the UK for 17 years (more than any place I have ever lived). Drawing on Abu-Lughod and Kondo, according to Narayan, a "halfie" is someone of mixed heritage or hybrid positionality, often navigating multiple cultural worlds, but she also critiques the term's simplicity by stating, "Two halves cannot adequately account for the complexity of an identity in which multiple countries, regions, religions, and classes may come together" (Narayan, 1993:674). Abu Lughod writes that "halfie" anthropologists have trouble distinguishing between speaking "for" and speaking "from", and that's because of their "split selves" (Abu-Lughod, L.,1991: pp. 137–162). In this context, I don't consider myself just as a "halfie" in terms of my national and cultural background (Turkish-British), but also in terms of my professional identity—curator, cook, host, and anthropologist—each with its codes, expectations, and privileges. These are not just "roles" but power, identification, and ethics axes. Talking about ethics, one thing I hadn't explicitly considered in my Space Enquiry form was that the supper clubs are ticketed and that monetary transaction has the possibility of ethnographic research leading to a different dynamic. This format creates a patron–host dynamic with economic stakes. I did, however, add a note on the tickets for the event that I will be observing and photos that will be taken, and I reiterated it in person so everyone knows that they would be incorporated into my module assignment. Another thing I had to consider was that the artist I invite may be more or less well-known and rely on you for visibility; there is collaboration but also gatekeeping. Having said this, though, since all of the supper clubs have been priced to only factor in the cost of the food, the artist/chef fee, and any production excluding a profit to me, I think it created a balance and makes it more accessible. 

Me as curator, anthropologist student and host observing, talking and entertaining

In the context of ethics, I think of bringing Scheper-Hughes into my space enquiry as a significant political dimension, as she is best known for her writing on embodied suffering, violence, and ethical responsibility in fieldwork. These principles translate meaningfully into my supper club research, especially considering your dual role as host-curator and ethnographer. Even though the supper club may not appear as a site of obvious violence or suffering (thank goodness for that!), it is still a place where emotional labour is performed (by me, the chef, and possibly the artist), class and cultural capital are expressed or consumed. Power relations appear in subtle ways. This ethical orientation encourages awareness of the hidden dynamics of care, exclusion, performance, and risk (Scheper-Hughes, N. 1995: pp 409–440). My positionality brings layers of insider and outsider tensions in acknowledging the economics of ticketed intimacy and everyone’s emotional investments (Scheper-Hughes, N. 1992: pp 1-31). Why supper clubs, though? Why now, and why is it relevant? Or have they always been relevant since the concept appeared?

Photo by Seckin Uysal from Curious Brand, detail of the dinner table

 Going back to the format of Freudian Bites and taking the February 27th supper club with artist Emma Witter in collaboration with chef Kawther Luay as a case study, I wanted to specifically examine positionality in the context of both Narayan and Abu-Lughod whilst also linking it to “Artful Ethnography” introduced by professor and artist Nora Wuttke at SOAS from her lecture (Wuttke, February 19th, 2025). In the lecture, Wuttke examined drawing and art marking as a methodology through her practice as a multidisciplinary artist, ethnographer, and professor. She presented drawing as a way of being and the sketchpad as engaging, creating knowledge, and feminist and indigenous critique. I was immediately inspired by her installations, practice, body of work, and how she incorporated her drawing into two of her professions (artist and ethnographer). I was reminded of Berger’s quote, “The relation between what we see and know is never settled. Each evening, we see the sunset. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.’” (Berger: 1972:7) and I wanted to incorporate that “seeing” into the supper club. 

For this iteration of Freudian Bites, I collaborated with Emma Witter–a London-based artist whose intuitive, alchemical practice transforms found and salvaged materials—often by-products of the city’s restaurant industry or treasures unearthed while mudlarking, into beguiling sculptures that reframe waste as wonder. Considering her artistic practice and the use of her tactility in her work, we decided to cover the dining table with a paper tablecloth. With this idea of having a drawing surface on the dining table, I wrote my observations and invited others to draw and write their observations, adding to the ethnography. Inspired by Michael Taussig’s “What Do Drawings Want?”(2009), this space enquiry has given me both a conceptual and poetic vocabulary for understanding that acts not just as a method of documentation or interaction but as something far more embodied magical, and compelling, especially in the context of J.G. Frazer’s idea of sympathetic magic where a drawing isn’t just a representation, but has a kind of power or connection to the thing it depicts (2009: pp 263-265).

Drawings from the supper club goers (27 Feb 2025), Kabakci has taken consent to scan.

Dipping in and out of the dining room and kitchen, it was so interesting to observe the dynamics, conversations, and how each course linked to the artist's practice and story, bringing new discussions to the table. It was also fascinating to observe collaborative chef Luay being so calm and collected in the background in the kitchen, just doing her own thing while everyone was having fun in the dining room. Going back to the ritualistic aspect of dining together, primarily through a curated meal, with Witter, we had prompts, poems, and collective exercises asking participants to answer and pass on to their neighbours. We collectively even wrote a poem together where everyone came up with three words. My role as a host, curator and anthropology student even extended into being a performer at times when I read out the poems or acted in a different way to keep the dialogue and conversation going.  It was genuinely transitional and powerful. At the end of the supper club, Emma gifted her limited edition artwork to everyone in a box. 

–

Our collective poem (27 February 2025)

Soft, spiral, pins

Island, braintrust. Chorus

Life, make, new

Chalice, past, present 

Angkor Wat, memory, matter

Cold, remnant, resilient 

Toothpick, trypophobia, universe

Shells, magic, collectivity 

–

Besides observing the conversations and making everyone collectively write and draw with me, I also sent a survey for extra impressions and data as a follow-up. Even though the demographic, age, and gender were mixed, the common denominator was that the guests were all interested in culture, dancing, and curiosity; "It was very nice to be invited into someone's private space, and it immediately created a personal, intimate atmosphere. I loved everything - the design, the artwork, the tablecloth doodles, the readings, the food. I'm really up there with some of the best food I've eaten! And the conversations flowed, even though we were all from different strands of life and ages. One word I heard many say was 'curious,' I felt that we all had that in common (and a love of dance music, which I also found interesting. Maybe something about looking for transcendence?" (An anonymous woman guest who was a writer at Freudian Bites). When I asked everyone if they had been to supper clubs before, nearly all of them had been to supper clubs but never to a supper club at home, which made their experience more memorable. Another supper club goer mentioned, "I loved how seamlessly the artist was included—she was clearly being honored, but at the same time, she felt like a co-host, which created such a warm and engaging atmosphere." All these quotes reminded me of the book Eating Together: Food, Friendship, and Inequality where the author also inspired by georg Simmel, explores the type of sociability afforded by different forms of food-related events; “In sum, people create bonds of intimacy with some degree of choice in non-kin relationships, using food and the household as material sites for its enactment. At the same time, the form of the event, the kind of food served, who prepares it, and how it is served indicate the nature of the relationships being created ((Julier A. P., 2013: 207).

Chef Kawther Luay’s dessert creation: Baked Sea Urchin Alaska held by Huma Kabakci, photo by Seckin Uysal

Taking in everything into account and reflecting on the supper club evening in collaboration with Witter and Luay, this space enquiry explored how supper clubs, especially those hosted in domestic settings, function as liminal, third spaces that blur the boundaries between public and private, hospitality and transaction, art and ethnography. Through participant observation, sensory ethnography, and autoethnographic reflection, I have found that supper clubs do more than serve food; they curate intimacy, aestheticise labor, and perform cultural meaning in real time. The dynamic between myself, the invited artist, and the supper club guests is not fixed but fluid and negotiated. It involves curatorial authority, emotional labor, co-creation, and moments of vulnerability. Inspired by Ruth Behar and Lila Abu-Lughod, I have embraced narrative and situated knowledge as valid and necessary modes of anthropological understanding. These intimate, often contradictory positionalities are not obstacles to objectivity but the texture of contemporary ethnographic practice. Overall, supper clubs can be seen as curated, ephemeral gatherings and acts of radical hospitality, where food becomes a medium for connection, sensing, and thinking with others. 

Reference List 

• Abu-Lughod, L. (1991) ‘Writing Against Culture’, in Fox, R.G. (ed.) Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, pp. 137–162.

• Abu-Lughod, L. Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. 1st ed., University of California Press, 2016. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctv1wxrvj. Accessed 10 Apr. 2025.

• Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

• Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing. Reprint. London: Penguin, 2008.

• Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books.

• Julier, Alice P. (2013) Eating Together: Food, Friendship, and Inequality. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

• Kondo, D. (1990) Crafting Selves: Power, Gender and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

• Narayan, K. (1993) How Native Is a "Native" Anthropologist’, American Anthropologist, 95(3), pp. 671–686.

• Oldenburg, R. (1999) The Great Good Place. New York: Marlowe & Company.

• Sutton, D. (2001) Remembrance of Repasts: An Anthropology of Food and Memory. Oxford: Berg.

• Scheper-Hughes, N. (1995) ‘The Primacy of the Ethical: Propositions for a Militant Anthropology’, Current Anthropology, 36(3), pp. 409–440.

• Scheper-Hughes, N. (1992) Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press.

• Sullivans SC Admin. “Learn All about Supper Clubs.” Sullivan’s Supper Club, April 22, 2021. https://sullivanssupperclub.com/blog/supper-clubs/. 

• Turner, V. (1969) The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Routledge (2007), New York

• Taussig, M. (2009) ‘What Do Drawings Want?’, Culture, Theory and Critique, 50(2), pp. 263–274.