‘Squeezing’ commercial traditional food production space, a case study of local Javanese traditional fish curing

Abstract

This paper explores the idea of “squeezing” as a way of integrating the space of cooking for commercial practice and other domestic-related activities within a limited setting. Such integration of the traditional fish curing space observed in this study arguably demonstrates squeezing as a spatial strategy, which invites further operations. This paper believes that squeezing operates not only temporally but also spatially, expanding the idea of the kitchen as a space constituted of multiple ministrategies. This paper investigates such spatial strategy of a smokehouse in Central Java, Indonesia, that performs traditional fish curing and simultaneously other domestic needs as their everyday practice. Observations and interviews were conducted to map the changes and movement of activities and stuff during the fish curing activity in a limited setting. The squeezing is characterized by the ministrategies and generates a cooking space with layered and nested spaces. These findings urge further discussion of everyday spatial organization as well as enriching the idea of functional flexibility and adaptability, particularly of the traditional food production setting.