In The Practice of Everyday Life, Volume 2: Dwelling, Cooking, Michel de Certeau, Luce Giard and Pierre Mayol explore the everyday practice of inhabiting and how cooking, beyond its utilitarian function, becomes a space of cultural and social meaning. Dwelling is not merely the physical occupation of a place, but a constant symbolic appropriation, where gestures, routines and personal adaptations transform space into home. The kitchen appears as a microcosm where memory, technique and creativity intertwine—a historically feminised territory where the transmission of knowledge, adaptation to resources, and identity expression converge. The text examines how domestic tactics confront strategies imposed by architectural planning or socio-economic norms, highlighting the ability of individuals to reconfigure spaces and practices according to their needs and values. Through testimonies and ethnographic observations, it presents cases where culinary improvisation and spatial reorganisation become a silent resistance to cultural homogenisation, reaffirming that home is both a physical place and a web of relationships and meanings. In this sense, cooking and dwelling are revealed as creative and political acts, which embody in the intimate sphere the tensions between the imposed and the lived, reminding us that daily life is fertile ground for the invention of the everyday.
De Certeau, M., Giard, L. and Mayol, P., 1998. The Practice of Everyday Life, Volume 2: Dwelling, Cooking. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
