The Txoko – Basque Cooking Club (and how to create a more communitarian society)
2019 I think
I really am blogging off the top of my head tonight but here goes
In the Basque country, there is a unique culture of cooking and sharing food based on the Txoko. Meaning literally ‘nook’ or ‘cosy corner’, The Txoko is a cooking club or sociedades gastronómicas in Spanish. Deriving from circles of friends, the clubs were formalised in the last quarter of the nineteenth century in urban centres such as San Sebastián. They provided community and security for young men moving away from their families and rural communities and into the cities for work. With a physical premises, a kitchen and a monthly fee for members, the clubs have a constitution and establish a system of intergenerational mentorship for the life-long members. Young men are enrolled into the Society and benefit from the life- wisdom and companionship of older members from whom they learn recipes. Members cook regularly for families, wives and friends. Most txokos are quite conservative, forbid the discussion of politics and some even prohibit access for women – although most now admit women but don’t allow them to cook. Because numbers are strictly limited, most clubs have long waiting lists and vacancies are rare.
In some ways, txokos are very similar to the myriad hobby clubs and associations that have been a feature of Anglophone countries since the English civil war i.e. allotments, golf clubs, dog breeding clubs etc. Anna Savord recounts how nineteenth century railway men would grow tulips on railway embankments (alongside potatoes) in order to compete against gentlemen-gardeners in horticultural competitions. For specific cultural reasons the txoko became a much more formal vehicle for the creation of a distinctively modern form of ‘gemeinschaft’ – inter-generational, face-to-face, patterns of mutual reciprocity and quasi- familial obligation which are none-the-less optional, opted-for as a matter of choice and rescindable. The relations which emerge are initiated with a ‘rite of passage’ and create psychological and social ties that weigh in on individual behaviour and life-choices in subtle but concerted ways (for instance, membership might be a significant factor in the choice of whether to move location or job).
Why is this significant? Late-modern western type societies are typically characterised by almost unlimited social and spatial mobility driven by a relentless individualization. This mobility is accentuated by state institutions such as universal higher education and the expectation that children will leave home and make their own way in the world, and that the state will act as a safety net of last resort and often fund this life course. It is also driven by the market which creates housing and labour market opportunities and, in a longer time horizon, pension plans, private insurance and a contractual and transactional solutions to the vagaries of life. In capitalist/social democratic nation-state societies the State-Market displaces Family- Community-Place as the predominant survival unit. Individual physical and economic security is guaranteed qua citizenship combined with labour market participation rather than family or community membership.
This is the reality underlying all of the problems of modernity that preoccupied the classical sociologists of modernization: disenchantment and rationalization and individualization (Weber), alienation (Marx) anomie (Durkheim), the loss of face-to-face communit (Tonnies), narcissism (Lasch), fear of death (Becker), the ontology of Homo clausus (Elias) and ontological insecurity (Giddens and Laing).
But the txoko actually increases the viscosity of social life. It creates a lattice of mutual obligation, expectation, habit and routine that slows life down – not completely and but enough. In a small way a life- time commitment to the txoko puts all of these same processes into reverse. But at the same time, there is no suggestion that this quasi family is a replacement for family. It is a modern urban phenomenon. And in the final analysis, there is no sense in which this viscosity and stasis approaches that of traditional rural society. On the other hand, there is in this institution the nucleus of a different and complementary ‘survival unit’ – a source of protection, mutual aid, advice, financial aid driven by a version of the barn-raising ethic.
Communitarian citizenship proposal
I have suggested elsewhere that in a world of degrowth, the social democratic assumptions of Market Society balanced by the State become problematic. In such a scenario, it makes sense to look towards a revival of the Livelihood – the domain of family, market-places, informal economies and place-bound community – to balance a static of contracting State-Market. The following suggestions explore (1) how state-led innovations might engender a burgeoning domain of Livelihood, and (2) how such new institutions might weld with the traditional structures of the nation-state polis to contribute to a new kind of associational democracy (Hirst ****). The proposals are quite simple.
National service – 2 years (military or social).
Annual/monthly/weekly service – one month spread over a year: volunteering, community service,
elder care. No financial remuneration but pension credits.
SERVICE: No exceptions – including all new immigrants.
Voting age to be RAISED – and conditional on 3 years of combined service in some capacity.
Barn raising as the foundation of the public sector: The structure and operation of public schools,
hospitals, seniors homes and parks will be transformed to allow much greater civic participation: seniors homes linked to schools; schools independent of local education authorities with much greater autonomy for head teachers to forge deep and reciprocal ties based partly on contractual but non-transactional and relational agreements with parents and students. Examples might include: binding agreements within one school community as to the age at which students will be allowed mobile phones or video games; shared expectations about parental and child involvement in school dances, barbeques; the linking of seniors homes, hospitals and schools; schools growing /cooking/ slaughtering their own animals.
State support for Txoko—Type—Associations (TTAs). A TTA involves a membership fee, life-long membership, a rite of passage marking membership, a physical premises, regular social-events/cooking and diverse activities etc.
An electorate of clubs: All registered clubs to get one vote for a reformed House of Lords/Senate. Like the institution that has served well for hundreds of years, membership will not be on the basis of one citizen, one vote. Rather it will emerge from a commons type structure linked to the organic and continuous pattern of social relations handed down from the past. But rather than hereditary power of the landed aristocracy, or the patronage of political parties, life-long representatives will be chosen by an electorate of registered clubs. These will function in a way that is not dissimilar to the political role of households in Germanic/Anglo Saxon tribal societies.
What problems does this address?
Cost: Replaces a large chunk of public sector with organised volunteering/community participation
Physical health: participation will involve life-long physical activity for many people who don’t get it.
Psychological health: participation and relationships developed over years will almost certainly do more for mental health than any amount of professional intervention and therapy
Social cohesion – GENERATIONS: rebuilding structured, intergenerational relations, continuous over time and in relation to particular places and institutions. Recovery of purpose for older citizens
Social cohesion – ethno-religious: Participation compulsory, life-long, no exceptions. Bonding capital within the clubs for sure but also bridging capital – building relations between ethnic and religious communities.
Constitutional reform – development of a democratic polity that recovers some of the tribal ‘we identity’ and social cohesion based on mutual obligation and nested scale of loyalty. Gemeinschaftlich democracy.
Vehicle for meaning-making, ‘imagined community’, reattachment of individuals to nested-we identities (anomie, alienation, narcissism, disenchantment). Clubs as a focus for hero/immortality projects (cf Ernest Becker).