Thanks so much for the question! And a great one at that.
I like Kinfolk for its beckoning back to something that we (myself from Anglo-Saxon descent) have forgotten or tucked away: the art of gathering.
The blind-spot of Kinfolk Magazine and others’ writing and working in hospitality is often the ignorance that most non-western cultures, or specifically, non-American cultures are still gathering in beautiful ways. In fact, gathering is so integral to these cultures, languages, and cuisines.
Kinfolk has a few Asian-Americans and African-Americans, but this collection of ‘gathering artists’ is predominantly middle class, educated, artsy, white folks. Kinfolk could broaden it’s coverage of hospitality/gathering in other cultures, which is does briefly and will have to do more in the future (after all, we can only see so many canoe picnics w/ flannel and Opinel knives before we get bored…), but if we glance at Kinfolk and others like it as a movement of art, it may be more difficult to critique.
We could critique modernism for lacking non-Western Europeans, but the movement, mentality, and art was birthed out of a time and place. The geography and chronology are a part of the ideas and life that was brought forth.
For the ‘Kinfolk movement’, we find a generation drowning in Facebook and social media longing for a connection of old; a drawing back into the wisdom and value of simple, tasteful, hosting and sharing in community.
So in many ways, I find the ‘Kinfolk movement’ as a rekindling of old, not an exclusive new wave of ‘hispterdom’.
