Becoming the Passionate, Entrepreneurial Self

Abstract

Food — its meanings, its production, its preparation, its transformation, its presentation and, finally, its consumption — is central to the stories, the drama and the appeal of Jamie’s Kitchen. Food, understood in the way it is in Jamie’s Kitchen, promises to provide the means to provoke passion in the young people targeted by the Fifteen Foundation. This passion, its relationship to food, and its location in a workplace such as Jamie’s Kitchen, promises to transform these young people into the entrepreneurial workers so valued by twenty-first-century capitalism. These ideas are made explicit in a discussion with Jamie Oliver on CBS’s (2006) 60 Minutes. Every year Fifteen trainees in the UK are taken on a tour of Tuscany to develop understandings of the origins of quality produce and the sorts of passions this produce might provoke. For Oliver this trip offers the following to his trainees:

They get a purpose of what it’s all about, you know, they get a romance … I think with Giovanni and this particular vineyard it’s kind of, they meet him, they get to know his personality and generosity and they see how he makes his wine and then they drink his wine and they finally realize that every damn thing in his life is consistent. And, actually, if you start acting consistent in a good way from today, it’s only a matter of time before you, too, can be an expert and a master.

(CBS, 2006)