Anxious Appetites: Food and consumer culture
Abstract
Despite government claims that food is safer and more readily available today than ever before, recent survey evidence demonstrates high levels of food-related anxiety among Western consumers. While chronic hunger and malnutrition are relatively rare in the West, food scares relating to individual products, concerns about global food security and other expressions of consumer anxiety about food remain widespread.
Anxious Appetites explores the causes of these present-day anxieties. Looking at fears over provenance and regulation in a world of lengthening supply chains and greater concentration of corporate power, Peter Jackson investigates how anxieties about food circulate and how they act as a channel for broader social issues. Drawing on case studies such as the 2013 horsemeat scandal and fears about the contamination of infant formula in China in 2008, he examines how and why these concerns emerge. Comparing survey results with ethnographic observation of consumer practice, he explores the gap between official advice about food safety and people’s everyday experience of food, including a critique of ideological notions of ‘consumer choice’.
A captivating, timely book which presents a new theory of social anxiety.
... Transformacije koncepta mediteranske prehrane, od tradicijske prehrane preko nematerijalne kulturne baštine do održivog prehrambenog modela, mnogo više govore o preokupacijama današnjice nego o samim prehrambenim obrascima, svakodnevnim prehrambenim praksama i izborima. Ostavljajući ovom prilikom otvorenima pitanja međusobne isprepletenosti kulturnih i prehrambenih politika, složena i narušena odnosa između okoliša i ljudi, trebali bismo se također upitati u kakvom su odnosu trenutna popularnost mediteranske prehrane i ideja tjeskobe modernih jelaca, kao najčešćeg izraza prehrambenih strahova sitog Zapada ( Jackson 2015), koji se nerijetko iskazuju razvojem i jačanjem etičkih potrošačkih praksi, favoriziranjem kratkih opskrbnih lanaca, lokalne konzumacije hrane i pitanja prehrambene suverenosti. Holistički pristup prehrambenoj kulturi, kakav je u srži mediteranske prehrane, svoju suvremenost, također, gradi poigravajući se (kulinarskom) nostalgijom i komodifikacijom (uljepšana) iskustva svakodnevice Sredozemlja. ...
... Transformacije koncepta mediteranske prehrane, od tradicijske prehrane preko nematerijalne kulturne baštine do održi-vog prehrambenog modela, mnogo više govore o preokupacijama današnjice nego o samim prehrambenim obrascima, svakodnevnim prehrambenim praksama i izborima. Ostavljajući ovom prilikom otvorenima pitanja međusobne isprepletenosti kulturnih i prehrambenih politika, složena i narušena odnosa između okoliša i ljudi, trebali bismo se također upitati u kakvom su odnosu trenutna popularnost mediteranske prehrane i ideja tjeskobe modernih jelaca, kao najčešćeg izraza prehrambenih strahova sitog Zapada ( Jackson 2015), koji se nerijetko iskazuju razvojem i jačanjem etičkih potrošačkih praksi, favoriziranjem kratkih opskrbnih lanaca, lokalne konzumacije hrane i pitanja prehrambene suverenosti. Holistički pristup prehrambenoj kulturi, kakav je u srži mediteranske prehrane, svoju suvremenost, također, gradi poigravajući se (kulinarskom) nostalgijom i komodifikacijom (uljepšana) rasprava Jelene Ivanišević "Mediteranska prehrana 3.0 -od tradicijske kuhinje do održivih politika" navedene opservacije uključuje, premda možda pojedine izazove ne razrađuje u očekivanoj mjeri. ...
... Transformations of the Mediterranean diet concept, from traditional food to intangible cultural heritage and a sustainable diet, speak more of present preoccupations than about food models, practices, and choices. As we leave the questions of the relationship between cultural and food policies aside, and the complex relations between the environment and people open, we should question how the current popularity of the Mediterranean diet relates to the anxiety 27 For the museum's activities in safeguarding and popularization of the Mediterranean diet, see: http://museumunicipaldetavira.cm-tavira.pt/?q=dm (accessed 23. 5. 2023. of modern eaters as the most common expression of food scares in the well-fed West ( Jackson 2015), which are often expressed with the development of more robust ethical consumer practices favoring short supply chains, local food consumption, and food sovereignty issues. A holistic approach to food culture, which is at the core of the Mediterranean diet, enacts its modernity by playing with (culinary) nostalgia and the comfort of the (beautified) experience of everyday Mediterranean life. ...
Ovaj će rad nastojati u kratkim crtama opisati konceptualne transformacije mediteranske prehrane od druge polovine 20. stoljeća do danas. Ovaj nesumnjivo popularni prehrambeni model, koji objedinjuje različite prehrambene kulture Sredozemlja, isprva je prepoznat kao zdravstveno blagotvoran, nudeći pomoć u prevenciji kardiovaskularnih bolesti. Početni impuls globalne popularnosti prehrambene kulture Sredozemlja, koji dolazi iz medicinskih i nutricionističkih znanosti, dugoročno je pripomogao pojednostavljenju složenih prehrambenih sustava Sredozemlja koji se od 2000-ih počinju prepoznavati kao homogeni kulinarski i kulturni obrazac. Nakon što je mediteranska prehrana 2010. godine upisana na UNESCO-ovu Reprezentativnu listu nematerijalne kulturne baštine čovječanstva, razumijevanje ove prehrambene kulture nesumnjivo se promijenilo. Danas mediteranska prehrana dobiva svoje nove artikulacije unutar politika održivog razvoja, očuvanja bioraznolikosti i ekosustava koje dugoročno nastoje razviti nove političke i ekonomske modele u okviru nužne transformacije trenutnih prehrambenih sustava prema zelenijim i održivijim rješenjima.
... A number of studies have begun to address these apparent shortcomings, including two high profile projects with a specific focus on food safety and domestic practices. Already underway was the ERC-funded project Consumer Culture in an Age of Anxiety, a collaboration between academic researchers in the UK and Sweden, with particular emphasis on food security and food safety (see Jackson 2015). And, in 2011, the FSA commissioned a qualitative study of UK households, prioritising 'the mundane, difficult-to-recall, routine aspects of kitchen life and avoid[ing] an emphasis simply on individuals and "what they know about what they do"' (Wills et al 2013: 3). ...
... the routine, unreflexive nature of much kitchen practice (e.g. Wills et al 2013;Evans 2014;Jackson 2015) the effect of disruption to routines at particular moments in the life course, e.g. having children (Wills et al 2013) that the kitchen is not always a neatly bounded space, and that food preparation is not always a neatly bounded activity, opening up possibilities for cross-contamination (Wills et al 2013) the combined role of sensory judgement and information in how things become edible/inedible (Watson and Meah 2013) the use of proxies and rules of thumb (Wills et al 2013) the effects of deteriorating materials and the 'disgust' response of bodies (Watson and Meah 2013;Evans 2014) the impact of how things are sold (Evans 2014) and available conduits for disposal (Metcalfe et al 2013) on household food practices. ...
... Rather than informing a conscious decision in the moment of purchase, these concerns and priorities had been incorporated into practical routines (cf. Watson and Meah, 2013;Jackson, 2015). ...
... Press coverage of this unanticipated, and illicit, appearance of horsemeat on British supermarket shelves was initially often jocular in tone. However, public and media disquiet grew steadily over the following weeks as these testing programmes produced further evidence of horsemeat contamination, and in some cases of intentional meat substitution, prompting the police to join the investigation in early February 2013 (Jackson, 2015). ...
... Although the prevalence of this substance in adulterated foodstuffs was later found -like the health risks posed by inadvertent consumption of trace amounts of it -to be minimal, for some of the firms involved these revelations of food fraud and chemical contamination constituted a major crisis with serious financial and reputational implications. In the weeks after the FSAI's initial announcement over ten million burgers were recalled from supermarket shelves (Jackson, 2015) and sales of frozen burgers fell by 43% (Neville, 2013). By August 2013 over 24,000 samples of processed beef products had undergone meat speciation testing, of which 47 had been found to contain horse DNA (National Audit Office, 2013). ...
... In so doing it dramatized the challenge of securing them against infiltration by malign actors as an urgent governmental problem, with investigators from the UK's National Audit Office (2013, p.5) concluding that the horsemeat affair had 'exposed weaknesses in controls in the food supply chain'. Analysing Horsegate therefore offers valuable opportunities both to scrutinise the rationalities and technologies which govern the transnational circuits of production and exchange that underpin contemporary capitalist economies and to problematise their pathologies (Brooks, Elliott, Spence, Walsh, & Dean, 2017;Jackson, 2015). In this vein, the numerous official inquiries commissioned in Horsegate's aftermath sought explicitly to identify shortcomings in the logics and arrangements through which contemporary food supply networks are regulated by investigating how this supply chain scandal might have come about. ...
This paper explores how transnational food supply chains are governed and secured through examining the 2013 horsemeat scandal, during which processed beef products were adulterated with horseflesh. Drawing on theories of governmentality and ignorance studies, it argues that the apparent ignorance among food businesses about their supply chains which this event exposed arises in response to a regulatory apparatus which renders businesses responsible for taking precautions only against foreseeable threats to food safety and authenticity. Limiting their knowledge of their supply chains therefore enables food businesses to control their ability to anticipate (and their liability for) crises. This paper highlights the role of strategic ignorance in rendering future events unforeseeable and ungovernable, and in mediating the politics of accountability and responsibility within anticipatory governmental apparatuses.
... 20 世纪 60-80 年代，饮食系统研究集中在农业地理领域 [69] 。受生产主义影响，相关 研究以空间科学和边际效用递减为指导，主要关注农作物 （agri-food） 生产及其数量问 题 [16,17,41,90] 。通过加大机械、资本和生物科技等物质投入来克服自然环境的限制 [3] ，并划分 出比较优势较大的区位来提高农业的专业化分工，农作物生产实现了同一区域的产量及 效率最大化 [37,91] 。而单产的提升又驱使食物生产越发集中于少部分地区，进而加剧了一地 的生产过剩和另一地的生产不足 [92] 。但这恰巧也成为生产主义饮食系统可持续运转的逻 辑，即人为制造农业发展的空间不均衡，继而依托复杂的加工技艺和流通网络来延长食 物链条的供应范围 [3] ，结合时空修复和区域间功能互补等技术 [2,19] ，最终实现区域整体层 面的食物数量均衡 [16] 。在政策层面，采取共同农业政策 （common agriculture policy） [93] 、 农业例外主义 （agricultural exceptionalism） [94] 等来鼓励局地的生产过剩，并严格限制城 乡二元的功能区划 [17] ，以此巩固和强化数量上的可持续。 这种数量可持续隐含着对"身体-食物"关系的僵化认知，并主要借助去地化的方式 来运作。具体来讲，在这一饮食系统中，食物被简化为物质能量的容器 [95] ， "身体"被视 作"消化机器 （digestive machine） " [21] ，食物之于"身体"不过是满足饱腹、充饥等物 质性需求，而饮食系统的目的则在于生产足够数量的食物来投喂"身体" 。但传统农业只 能"看天吃饭" ，当面临战后恢复和人口爆炸带来的粮食危机时，农业地理诉诸于去地化 的转型 [80] ，并运用专门化、规模化等技术来克服自然环境的限制 [2] ，进而最大限度地掘取 食物产量。这一转型改变了食物的自然生长规律，否认其原真的、天然的差异，继而按 照工业化审美来建立标准化的原真性，致使食物的颜色、大小、味道等变得预先可期 [96] 。 在食物安全层面，通过尽可能地减少病菌或污染物 （例如巴氏杀菌法） ，人们不需要太多 图 1 可持续饮食系统的分析框架 Fig. 1 The framework of sustainable food system 地 理 研 究 38 卷 判断就能获得较为"安全"的食物 [21] 。而在这种以扩大物质生产为核心法则的饮食系统 中，食物之于人体的健康价值也被边缘化：只要食物不掺假、达到最低限度的生理安全 和营养标准就可以 [97] 。同时，为配合生产主义饮食系统，公共健康领域采用医疗化的运 作方式来评鉴食物的营养价值，将食物简化为特定的营养元素，认为人们只需填充特定 "营养素"就能获得健康的疗效 [98] 。 可以发现，生产主义饮食系统主张的是从宏观层面来保障食物的充分供应，这在物 资匮乏而人口急剧增长的战后恢复时期具有一定的价值。但对数量和效率的单一追求， 也导致食物生产被大型跨国公司垄断，人们逐渐脱离完整的饮食实践而只能关注到食物 在餐桌上的终端呈现，饮食原真、安全与健康等多重价值也被简化为"身体"对食物纯 粹的物质性依赖。 3.2 消费主义和质量可持续 20 世纪 80 年代后期，饮食实践逐渐摆脱经济至上和效率优先的固有认知，学界也开 始从消费终端来反思生产主义饮食系统 [69] 。这一时期主要受到文化转向和消费主义的影 响，尤其是 Valentine 的经典之作 《Consuming geographies: We are where we eat》 的问 世，将传统的农作物地理 （agri-food geography） 推向了饮食地理 （geographies of food） [51] 。 自此，相关研究越发关注食物质量 （quality turn） 、食物消费及其在日常生活中的价值和 意义 [4,99] ，并认为增进人们对食物的消费自主权是推动饮食系统变革的关键 [29,100] 。在此基 础上，地理学者较多采用商品链条 （commodity chain） 、行动者网络 （actor network theory） 等分析方法 [4,48,101] ，主要探讨食物从生产到消费过程中个体消费自主权的变化，以期 破除商品交换关系对日常生活意义的遮蔽，进而从消费端重构饮食系统。在实践方面， 消费者也主动寻求生产主义饮食系统之外的替代性食物地理 （alternative food geographies） [102] ，例如农夫市集、社区支持农业、有机农场等，认为食物质量嵌入于传统的、 再地化的饮食实践中 [10,26,54,62] 。而这种对食物质量的关注，大多根源于消费者对生产主义 饮食系统的不信任 [53,81] ，特别是标准化的质量传统及其引发的食物全球同质化、安全恐慌 （例如疯牛病、手足口病等） 和肥胖流行病等 [2,21,96] 。 质量可持续同样隐含着对"身体-食物"关系的再次认识，并通过再地化的转型来实 践。具体而言，在消费主义认识中，食物被视为文化意义的载体 [103] ， "身体"则是自我表 达和实现的手段 [51,104] ，食物之于"身体"更多是满足个人审美、认同等符号性需求，而 饮食系统的目的则在于提供差异性和多样化的食物来供其选择。但在生产主义所奉行的 去地化策略下，食物已然沦为外表统一、无差别的工业化产品 [2,96] ，其地方意义和文化价 值不断消解，人们亦无从判别食物的质量和价值。为此，消费主义饮食系统诉诸于"再 地化"的转型，主张通过追踪原产地、挖掘其背后故事等方式，来重新编织食物之于 "地方"的关系 [79] ，进而为食物赋予社会生命 （social life of things） [27] ，以此来制造 （manufacture） 食物的质量和意义 [105,106] 。但在实践中，这一转型并没有脱离生产主义的控 制，消费者仍须依赖零售部门来获得食物信息 [50,103] ，而零售商则借助符号化的原真、标 签化的质量认证等来展现"食物背后的故事" [40,73,74,105] 。在饮食安全和健康问题上，这一 饮食系统宣扬的是通过消费者的自主选择来强化自身的价值认同，而零售部门则顺势将 责任和风险转嫁给消费者 [16,20] ：表面上，消费者可以通过环境友好型消费、道德式消费、 支付健康溢价等方式来践行自己的食物消费自主权 [40,81,107] ...
... 20 世纪 60-80 年代，饮食系统研究集中在农业地理领域 [69] 。受生产主义影响，相关 研究以空间科学和边际效用递减为指导，主要关注农作物 （agri-food） 生产及其数量问 题 [16,17,41,90] 。通过加大机械、资本和生物科技等物质投入来克服自然环境的限制 [3] ，并划分 出比较优势较大的区位来提高农业的专业化分工，农作物生产实现了同一区域的产量及 效率最大化 [37,91] 。而单产的提升又驱使食物生产越发集中于少部分地区，进而加剧了一地 的生产过剩和另一地的生产不足 [92] 。但这恰巧也成为生产主义饮食系统可持续运转的逻 辑，即人为制造农业发展的空间不均衡，继而依托复杂的加工技艺和流通网络来延长食 物链条的供应范围 [3] ，结合时空修复和区域间功能互补等技术 [2,19] ，最终实现区域整体层 面的食物数量均衡 [16] 。在政策层面，采取共同农业政策 （common agriculture policy） [93] 、 农业例外主义 （agricultural exceptionalism） [94] 等来鼓励局地的生产过剩，并严格限制城 乡二元的功能区划 [17] ，以此巩固和强化数量上的可持续。 这种数量可持续隐含着对"身体-食物"关系的僵化认知，并主要借助去地化的方式 来运作。具体来讲，在这一饮食系统中，食物被简化为物质能量的容器 [95] ， "身体"被视 作"消化机器 （digestive machine） " [21] ，食物之于"身体"不过是满足饱腹、充饥等物 质性需求，而饮食系统的目的则在于生产足够数量的食物来投喂"身体" 。但传统农业只 能"看天吃饭" ，当面临战后恢复和人口爆炸带来的粮食危机时，农业地理诉诸于去地化 的转型 [80] ，并运用专门化、规模化等技术来克服自然环境的限制 [2] ，进而最大限度地掘取 食物产量。这一转型改变了食物的自然生长规律，否认其原真的、天然的差异，继而按 照工业化审美来建立标准化的原真性，致使食物的颜色、大小、味道等变得预先可期 [96] 。 在食物安全层面，通过尽可能地减少病菌或污染物 （例如巴氏杀菌法） ，人们不需要太多 图 1 可持续饮食系统的分析框架 Fig. 1 The framework of sustainable food system 地 理 研 究 38 卷 判断就能获得较为"安全"的食物 [21] 。而在这种以扩大物质生产为核心法则的饮食系统 中，食物之于人体的健康价值也被边缘化：只要食物不掺假、达到最低限度的生理安全 和营养标准就可以 [97] 。同时，为配合生产主义饮食系统，公共健康领域采用医疗化的运 作方式来评鉴食物的营养价值，将食物简化为特定的营养元素，认为人们只需填充特定 "营养素"就能获得健康的疗效 [98] 。 可以发现，生产主义饮食系统主张的是从宏观层面来保障食物的充分供应，这在物 资匮乏而人口急剧增长的战后恢复时期具有一定的价值。但对数量和效率的单一追求， 也导致食物生产被大型跨国公司垄断，人们逐渐脱离完整的饮食实践而只能关注到食物 在餐桌上的终端呈现，饮食原真、安全与健康等多重价值也被简化为"身体"对食物纯 粹的物质性依赖。 3.2 消费主义和质量可持续 20 世纪 80 年代后期，饮食实践逐渐摆脱经济至上和效率优先的固有认知，学界也开 始从消费终端来反思生产主义饮食系统 [69] 。这一时期主要受到文化转向和消费主义的影 响，尤其是 Valentine 的经典之作 《Consuming geographies: We are where we eat》 的问 世，将传统的农作物地理 （agri-food geography） 推向了饮食地理 （geographies of food） [51] 。 自此，相关研究越发关注食物质量 （quality turn） 、食物消费及其在日常生活中的价值和 意义 [4,99] ，并认为增进人们对食物的消费自主权是推动饮食系统变革的关键 [29,100] 。在此基 础上，地理学者较多采用商品链条 （commodity chain） 、行动者网络 （actor network theory） 等分析方法 [4,48,101] ，主要探讨食物从生产到消费过程中个体消费自主权的变化，以期 破除商品交换关系对日常生活意义的遮蔽，进而从消费端重构饮食系统。在实践方面， 消费者也主动寻求生产主义饮食系统之外的替代性食物地理 （alternative food geographies） [102] ，例如农夫市集、社区支持农业、有机农场等，认为食物质量嵌入于传统的、 再地化的饮食实践中 [10,26,54,62] 。而这种对食物质量的关注，大多根源于消费者对生产主义 饮食系统的不信任 [53,81] ，特别是标准化的质量传统及其引发的食物全球同质化、安全恐慌 （例如疯牛病、手足口病等） 和肥胖流行病等 [2,21,96] 。 质量可持续同样隐含着对"身体-食物"关系的再次认识，并通过再地化的转型来实 践。具体而言，在消费主义认识中，食物被视为文化意义的载体 [103] ， "身体"则是自我表 达和实现的手段 [51,104] ，食物之于"身体"更多是满足个人审美、认同等符号性需求，而 饮食系统的目的则在于提供差异性和多样化的食物来供其选择。但在生产主义所奉行的 去地化策略下，食物已然沦为外表统一、无差别的工业化产品 [2,96] ，其地方意义和文化价 值不断消解，人们亦无从判别食物的质量和价值。为此，消费主义饮食系统诉诸于"再 地化"的转型，主张通过追踪原产地、挖掘其背后故事等方式，来重新编织食物之于 "地方"的关系 [79] ，进而为食物赋予社会生命 （social life of things） [27] ，以此来制造 （manufacture） 食物的质量和意义 [105,106] 。但在实践中，这一转型并没有脱离生产主义的控 制，消费者仍须依赖零售部门来获得食物信息 [50,103] ，而零售商则借助符号化的原真、标 签化的质量认证等来展现"食物背后的故事" [40,73,74,105] 。在饮食安全和健康问题上，这一 饮食系统宣扬的是通过消费者的自主选择来强化自身的价值认同，而零售部门则顺势将 责任和风险转嫁给消费者 [16,20] ：表面上，消费者可以通过环境友好型消费、道德式消费、 支付健康溢价等方式来践行自己的食物消费自主权 [40,81,107] ...
... 20 世纪 60-80 年代，饮食系统研究集中在农业地理领域 [69] 。受生产主义影响，相关 研究以空间科学和边际效用递减为指导，主要关注农作物 （agri-food） 生产及其数量问 题 [16,17,41,90] 。通过加大机械、资本和生物科技等物质投入来克服自然环境的限制 [3] ，并划分 出比较优势较大的区位来提高农业的专业化分工，农作物生产实现了同一区域的产量及 效率最大化 [37,91] 。而单产的提升又驱使食物生产越发集中于少部分地区，进而加剧了一地 的生产过剩和另一地的生产不足 [92] 。但这恰巧也成为生产主义饮食系统可持续运转的逻 辑，即人为制造农业发展的空间不均衡，继而依托复杂的加工技艺和流通网络来延长食 物链条的供应范围 [3] ，结合时空修复和区域间功能互补等技术 [2,19] ，最终实现区域整体层 面的食物数量均衡 [16] 。在政策层面，采取共同农业政策 （common agriculture policy） [93] 、 农业例外主义 （agricultural exceptionalism） [94] 等来鼓励局地的生产过剩，并严格限制城 乡二元的功能区划 [17] ，以此巩固和强化数量上的可持续。 这种数量可持续隐含着对"身体-食物"关系的僵化认知，并主要借助去地化的方式 来运作。具体来讲，在这一饮食系统中，食物被简化为物质能量的容器 [95] ， "身体"被视 作"消化机器 （digestive machine） " [21] ，食物之于"身体"不过是满足饱腹、充饥等物 质性需求，而饮食系统的目的则在于生产足够数量的食物来投喂"身体" 。但传统农业只 能"看天吃饭" ，当面临战后恢复和人口爆炸带来的粮食危机时，农业地理诉诸于去地化 的转型 [80] ，并运用专门化、规模化等技术来克服自然环境的限制 [2] ，进而最大限度地掘取 食物产量。这一转型改变了食物的自然生长规律，否认其原真的、天然的差异，继而按 照工业化审美来建立标准化的原真性，致使食物的颜色、大小、味道等变得预先可期 [96] 。 在食物安全层面，通过尽可能地减少病菌或污染物 （例如巴氏杀菌法） ，人们不需要太多 图 1 可持续饮食系统的分析框架 Fig. 1 The framework of sustainable food system 地 理 研 究 38 卷 判断就能获得较为"安全"的食物 [21] 。而在这种以扩大物质生产为核心法则的饮食系统 中，食物之于人体的健康价值也被边缘化：只要食物不掺假、达到最低限度的生理安全 和营养标准就可以 [97] 。同时，为配合生产主义饮食系统，公共健康领域采用医疗化的运 作方式来评鉴食物的营养价值，将食物简化为特定的营养元素，认为人们只需填充特定 "营养素"就能获得健康的疗效 [98] 。 可以发现，生产主义饮食系统主张的是从宏观层面来保障食物的充分供应，这在物 资匮乏而人口急剧增长的战后恢复时期具有一定的价值。但对数量和效率的单一追求， 也导致食物生产被大型跨国公司垄断，人们逐渐脱离完整的饮食实践而只能关注到食物 在餐桌上的终端呈现，饮食原真、安全与健康等多重价值也被简化为"身体"对食物纯 粹的物质性依赖。 3.2 消费主义和质量可持续 20 世纪 80 年代后期，饮食实践逐渐摆脱经济至上和效率优先的固有认知，学界也开 始从消费终端来反思生产主义饮食系统 [69] 。这一时期主要受到文化转向和消费主义的影 响，尤其是 Valentine 的经典之作 《Consuming geographies: We are where we eat》 的问 世，将传统的农作物地理 （agri-food geography） 推向了饮食地理 （geographies of food） [51] 。 自此，相关研究越发关注食物质量 （quality turn） 、食物消费及其在日常生活中的价值和 意义 [4,99] ，并认为增进人们对食物的消费自主权是推动饮食系统变革的关键 [29,100] 。在此基 础上，地理学者较多采用商品链条 （commodity chain） 、行动者网络 （actor network theory） 等分析方法 [4,48,101] ，主要探讨食物从生产到消费过程中个体消费自主权的变化，以期 破除商品交换关系对日常生活意义的遮蔽，进而从消费端重构饮食系统。在实践方面， 消费者也主动寻求生产主义饮食系统之外的替代性食物地理 （alternative food geographies） [102] ，例如农夫市集、社区支持农业、有机农场等，认为食物质量嵌入于传统的、 再地化的饮食实践中 [10,26,54,62] 。而这种对食物质量的关注，大多根源于消费者对生产主义 饮食系统的不信任 [53,81] ，特别是标准化的质量传统及其引发的食物全球同质化、安全恐慌 （例如疯牛病、手足口病等） 和肥胖流行病等 [2,21,96] 。 质量可持续同样隐含着对"身体-食物"关系的再次认识，并通过再地化的转型来实 践。具体而言，在消费主义认识中，食物被视为文化意义的载体 [103] ， "身体"则是自我表 达和实现的手段 [51,104] ，食物之于"身体"更多是满足个人审美、认同等符号性需求，而 饮食系统的目的则在于提供差异性和多样化的食物来供其选择。但在生产主义所奉行的 去地化策略下，食物已然沦为外表统一、无差别的工业化产品 [2,96] ，其地方意义和文化价 值不断消解，人们亦无从判别食物的质量和价值。为此，消费主义饮食系统诉诸于"再 地化"的转型，主张通过追踪原产地、挖掘其背后故事等方式，来重新编织食物之于 "地方"的关系 [79] ，进而为食物赋予社会生命 （social life of things） [27] ，以此来制造 （manufacture） 食物的质量和意义 [105,106] 。但在实践中，这一转型并没有脱离生产主义的控 制，消费者仍须依赖零售部门来获得食物信息 [50,103] ，而零售商则借助符号化的原真、标 签化的质量认证等来展现"食物背后的故事" [40,73,74,105] 。在饮食安全和健康问题上，这一 饮食系统宣扬的是通过消费者的自主选择来强化自身的价值认同，而零售部门则顺势将 责任和风险转嫁给消费者 [16,20] ：表面上，消费者可以通过环境友好型消费、道德式消费、 支付健康溢价等方式来践行自己的食物消费自主权 [40,81,107] ...
The sustainable development of food in an age of environmental change and global food crisis has become a public concern and simultaneously a central research agenda that gains growing attention from scholars with diverse research backgrounds. This paper presents a systematic review on the historical evolution of what is termed 'sustainable food system' in western geography from 1960s to today and based on this retrospect, a relational perspective is put forward in this paper, which focuses on the embodiment of foodways and the interconnections between body and environment. This study sums up the cardinal rationales and principles in this new paradigm of sustainable food system in two steps. First, it suggests that 'body-food relation', after a prolonged neglect in productivism agriculture geography and consumerism food geography, does function as the fundamental ontology in sustainable food system research. Above all, this relational paradigm rejects the nature-society dualism that fueled the division between food researches in physical and human geography, namely division between agriculture geography and food’s cultural geography. It undermines the traditional opinion on food as a transcendental reality that can achieve sustainability in-itself through spatial fix or quality certification. In contrast, relational paradigm conceptualize food as a unity of nature and society that emerges, in a bodily-connections manner, from the process of 'things becoming food'. In this perspective, sustainable 'body-food relation', which is radically unstable and embedded in dynamic socio-natures, is the fundamental rationale in a relationally sustainable food system. Meanwhile, food is not simply a container of energy or nutrition and bodies are also not merely a passive recipient of material or meaning. Instead, they are reciprocally constituted in both material and symbolic ways and are intrinsically place-based. Put another way, sustainable food system should be ever-changing and can only be achieved through re-localized foodways. Second, this paper identifies three key principles, namely food authenticity, food security and food health, in building a sustainable food system. Such principles should not be understood as a static goal, but a fluid process in place-based socio-nature contexts. Because food is considered to emerge from the process of 'body-food encounter', these principles inevitably involve both material and socially constructed authenticity, quantity security and cultural acceptability, physiological health and psychosocial wellbeing. Besides, relationally sustainable food system also highlights a focus on the socio-nature environment and multilevel connotations of these principles, which further extends their meanings, such as food justice, food sovereignty, nutrition conventions, etc. In summary, this study seeks to promote the synergies in food geography and it also calls for Chinese food geographers to engage with sustainable food researches through an integrative and systematic perspective.
... The distinction between homemade food as culturally valuable and ready-made foods as unacceptable has been surprisingly persistent in moral discourses around cooking and eating practices (Moisio, Arnould and Price, 2004;Short, 2006;Evans, 2014;Jackson, 2015). Yet defining what counts as ready-made or convenience food and what counts as homemade food is 4 difficult because it is dependent on historical and cultural context (Short, 2006). ...
... Studies of ready-made/convenience foods suggest it is largely normalized, although to different degrees within different countries and cultural contexts (Carrigan, Szmigin and Leek, 2006;Gatley, Caraher and Lang, 2014;Glucksmann, 2014;Jackson, 2015;Halkier, 2016). In a study comparing French and British cooking habits, Gatley et al (2014) reveal that although French consumers use ready-prepared ingredients, they were less likely to use totally prepared ready-meals than their British counterparts. ...
... The acceptability of ready-made food depends upon how often and by whom this food is consumed (Evans, 2014). Those with responsibility for cooking for children and partners (predominantly women) frequently display guilt or shame when admitting to using convenience foods, reflecting on its antinomy with values of care (Warde, 1997;Moisio, Arnould and Price, 2004;Jackson, 2015). ...
The aim of this paper is to develop and apply a framework to explore how moralities of consumption are constituted in and through markets. Using the case of ready-made foods, this paper argues moral economies are comprised through interactions between micro-, meso- and macro-level processes in the form of instituted systems of provision, state regulation, collective food customs promoted though media, NGOs and lifestyle practitioners, and the everyday reflections of consumers. Building on a theoretical framework developed to understand the moral economy of work and employment (Bolton and Laaser 2013), this paper explores how markets for ready-made food are incessantly negotiated in the context of moral ideas about cooking, femininity and individual responsibility. It focuses on ‘new’ market innovations of fresh ready-to-cook meal solutions and explores how these products are both a response to moralizing discourses about cooking ‘properly’, as well as an intervention into the market that offers opportunities for new moral identities to be performed. Using data gathered from interviews with food manufacturers and consumers, I advocate for a multi-layered perspective that captures the dynamic interplay between consumers, markets and moralities of consumption.
... The government's response to these food shortages has been inconsistent (Power at al., 2020), and there was little unified public messaging offered about the food shortages, save denying them. This response is at odds with participant's experiences which weakens trust (Lang, 2003;Price, 2020) and creates further anxiety (Jackson, 2015). These references to supporting the local are examples of defensive localness (Winter 2003), in which a support of the local is an assertive response to difficulty and perceived incompetence in the wider social structures. ...
... Because we do not know where our food has come from, who has touched it or how it was treated, we do not trust it. For Jackson (2015) food anxieties are high despite the current increasing availability. Although initially a paradox, food anxieties originate because foods are placeless until they arrive in the supermarkets. ...
During the U.K.‘s lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, both food shortages and stockpiling were well-publicised events. The U.K's food system has struggled and lockdown shortages are part of an ongoing trend of anxiety around the food system. Analysis of 19 interviews with people responsible for food procurement within households reveals that while shortages were often experienced for a number of weeks, stockpiling did not take the form of buying large quantities. Instead, modest extra procurement is a more appropriate description of food procurement during lockdown. This article maps six resilience strategies utilised by households in the U.K. during lockdown, of which extra procurement was just one.
... For consumer groups turning to "quality" food, quality often meant shorter supply chains (Goodman, 2003). Despite retailers sometimes playing to this construction of risk with "buy British" responses to transnational food scares (Jackson, 2015), they largely have sought ways to maintain their complex global supply chains. A-seasonal, "just-in-time" models, that prioritise delivery on demand and rapid substitution of foodstuffs to ensure a constant and varied supply of food available to consumers, require complex supply chains with inbuilt redundancy and a global reach. ...
... In 2013, horsemeat was deliberately substituted for beef in the early stages of the supply chain, which led to it being widely found in productstypically, processed ready-meals such as lasagnefrom major supermarkets. This incident developed into a food scare that revived public concerns over the global reach and complexity of food chains (Jackson, 2015). Among regulators (both public and private), this brought to the fore new supply-chain-focused concepts for considering uncertain futures. ...
This paper examines the use of supply chain mapping by actors in the UK food system to anticipate problematic futures. Supply chain mapping as an anticipatory practice is a response to a recent food scare that has reinforced concerns about the safety, quality and authenticity of foodstuffs circulating within supply chains. Our analysis of this novel set of mapping practices is based around the visibility of the supply chain that they offer and the ways in which this is generated or made to relate to future problems as both objects and processes. Supply chain maps as objects can induce surprise and uncertainty over the future, but they can also demonstrate responsibility for risk or be a means of allocating and assuring accountability for future problems. Looking at mapping as a process highlights both the difficulty of mapping supply chains and what is actually involved in using supply chain maps to give form to potential future problems. We characterise both of these processes as navigational, based on creating and reading ‘signposts’ that allow risky food futures to be plotted as trajectories in space and time. Supply chain maps describe a process as a well as a set of spatial relations and navigating futures with these maps is a skilled task involving accumulated knowledge about food risks and learning to recognise supply chain maps as encompassing time and space. Our analysis highlights how things not made visible by the map, but present through those involved in the mapping, are as important in its anticipatory use as the things made visible. Maps are part of a wider process of making sense of risky food chain futures that is filled with uncertainty and power relations.
... Sociological accounts of sustainable consumption have advanced powerful critiques of the orthodox framings of this subject. The sociologies of consumption, everyday life and science and technology have challenged those framings on the grounds that they: reduce consumption to matters of individual 'choice' (Jackson, 2015;Shove, 2010); treat patterns of consumption as aggregate purchasing decisions (Southerton and Ulph, 2014); consider technological change as simply a matter of the adoption of 'more efficient' eco-innovations (Mylan, 2015;Welch, 2015); and present everyday lives as inert barriers to be overcome through 'behaviour' change interventions (Mylan et al., 2016;Southerton, 2013). The sociology of consumption, with its theoretical and empirical focus on processes of acquisition, appropriation and appreciation has demonstrated how goods and services are: unevenly distributed in ways that symbolically communicate identities and social difference; provisioned and used in ways that order social relations; and embedded in changing cultural understandings and expectations of an 'acceptable life' (Warde, 2010). ...
... Domestic laundry is a good example of dominant policy framings of sustainable consumption, where the solution is identified as more resource-efficient technologies and the changing of individual behaviours through provision of information (Mylan, 2016). Such an approach is implicitly based on a 'deficit' model of human action that assumes consumers lack adequate knowledge or wilfully ignore advice (Jackson, 2015). In contrast to this conceptualization our analysis has illustrated the knowledgeable and skilful work of practitioners, who actively manage: sequences of activities in order to negotiate the often competing demands of multiple household schedules; the restrictions of domestic infrastructures; and the variety of cultural procedures and understandings evoked across a range of situations and people. ...
Sociological contributions to debates surrounding sustainable consumption have presented strong critiques of methodological individualism and technological determinism. Drawing from a range of sociological insights from the fields of consumption, everyday life and science and technology studies, these critiques emphasize the recursivity between (a) everyday performances and object use, and (b) how those performances are socially ordered. Empirical studies have, however, been criticized as being descriptive of micro-level phenomena to the exclusion of explanations of processes of reproduction or change. Developing a methodological approach that examines sequences of activities this article explores different forms of coordination (activity, inter-personal and material) that condition the temporal and material flows of laundry practices. Doing so produces an analysis that de-centres technologies and individual performances, allowing for the identification of mechanisms that order the practice of laundry at the personal, household and societal levels. These are: social relations; cultural conventions; domestic materiality; and institutionalized temporal rhythms. In conclusion, we suggest that addressing such mechanisms offers fruitful avenues for fostering more sustainable consumption, compared to dominant approaches that are founded within ‘deficit models’ of action.
... Although Muslim anxieties about potential contamination from pork and alcohol during industrial production have been widely recognised (Bergeaud-Blackler et al., 2015;Armanios & Ergene, 2018), it thus appears that Muslim consumers have very similar concerns to non-Muslim consumers-often about the same foods, including chicken (Jackson, 2015). In situations where halal business practices are visible to consumers, they are often adjacent to a wide range of practices that are again questionable for Muslims. ...
In recent decades, the increasing visibility of halal food has become highly emotive and controversial, with halal meat in particular being seen as an indicator of the growing presence of Islam and what are seen to be ‘barbaric’ Muslim food practices. This chapter moves beyond these dominant narratives to demonstrate how, as the UK halal market has expanded, and the range of halal food options has increased, Muslim consumers have been compelled to justify their halal food choices in ever more complex ways. Within the sociology of food literature, the proliferation of food choice often draws on the notion of informalisation to illustrate the dissolution of structures governing food production and consumption. Here, drawing on insights from Eliasian sociology, a more compelling account of informalisation is presented, not only to move beyond the notion of halal as a ‘barbaric’ practice, but to illustrate that Muslim and non-Muslim consumers have very similar concerns and anxieties about food production and consumption.
... Overall, even though Global South countries are highly affected by burdens of foodborne disease (see Liguori et al. 2022), existing research has a strong bias toward examining consumers' food anxieties (Jackson 2015) and food safety in the Global North. Thus, further research is needed on the particularities of navigating food safety anxieties in Global South contexts. ...
In recent years, the southern Vietnamese metropolis of Ho Chi Minh City has seen a proliferation of urban gardening, ranging from the minute home-growing of herbs and vegetables to commercial urban gardens. In this article, I argue that what underlies these phenomena is urbanites' striving to control the food they consume in light of prevalent food safety concerns in Vietnam. Based on ethnographic research, the article demonstrates that urban food growing efforts are largely related to a widespread crisis of confidence in the food system in general and in farming specifically. People are particularly concerned with agrochemical contamination of food and its long-term health effects. Meanwhile, tensions exist between negative views of "unsafe" practices of unknown farmers and the simultaneous romanticization of rural life and of food acquired through personal rural connections. In the context of growing socioeconomic inequalities in the late socialist country, the research also examines how urban gardening as an individualized and middle-class activity renders visible class differences in access to locally produced, "safe" food.
... A general need for change in the food system is a nearly uncontroversial claim today. Our data has not only shown that displaying their sustainability efforts "comes naturally" to all agri-food businesses, often in converging ways, but also that consumers unanimously express a deep frustration with, and often anxieties about, the status quo of food provision (see also Jackson 2015). We read this as an often implicit, sometimes explicit, perception that "normal" food practices are largely detrimental to the environment, other humans and nonhumans-in other words: imperial. ...
It is widely accepted that overcoming the social-ecological crises we face requires major changes to the food system. However, opinions diverge on the question whether those ‘great efforts’ towards sustainability require systemic changes or merely systematic ones. Drawing upon Brand and Wissen’s concept of “imperial modes of living” (Rev Int Polit Econ 20:687–711, 2013; The imperial mode of living: everyday life and the ecological crisis of capitalism, Verso, London/New York, 2021), we ask whether the lively debates about sustainability and ‘ethical’ consumption among producers and consumers in Germany are far reaching enough to sufficiently reduce the imperial weight on the environment and other human and nonhuman animals. By combining discourse analysis of agri-food businesses’ sustainability reports with narrative consumer interviews, we examine understandings of sustainability in discourses concerning responsible food provision and shed light on how those discourses are inscribed in consumers’ everyday food practices. We adopt Ehgartner’s discursive frames of ‘consumer sovereignty’, ‘economic rationality’, and ‘stewardship’ to illustrate our findings, and add a fourth one of ‘legitimacy’. Constituting the conditions under which food-related themes become sustainability issues, these frames help businesses to (1) individualise the responsibility to enact changes, (2) tie efforts towards sustainability to financial profits, (3) subject people and nature to the combination of care and control, and (4) convey legitimacy through scientific authority. We discuss how these frames, mirrored in some consumer narratives, work to sideline deeper engagement with ecological sustainability and social justice, and how they brush aside the desires of some ostensibly ‘sovereign’ consumers to overcome imperial modes of food provision through much more far reaching, systemic changes. Finally, we reflect on possible paths towards a de-imperialised food system.
... More generally, a focus on 'consumer choice' and individual responsibility (at the household level) is likely to be insufficient in achieving wider system-level changes, given the fundamental information and power asymmetries that exist with the contemporary food system. Understanding what has been called the 'locus of responsibility' (Jackson, 2015) for environmental and food-related challenges is therefore a key issue (see also section 6.5, p.116 on responsible consumer behaviour). ...
The global demand for food will increase in the future. To meet this demand, it is not enough simply to increase productivity in a sustainable way. We also need to change from linear mass consumption to a more circular economy — which will mean changing our norms, habits and routines.
The evidence shows that this kind of behaviour change needs to happen collectively, not just individually. So we need joined-up governance at local, national and international levels.
Food systems also contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. This can be addressed by reducing waste or directing it back into the supply chain.
A mix of different measures will be most effective. The evidence shows that taxation is one of the most effective ways to modify behaviour. Accreditation and labelling schemes can also have an impact.
Meanwhile, reform of European agriculture and fisheries policies offer great opportunities to develop resilience and sustainability.
But there is not yet enough evidence to know for sure exactly what works in practice, so the steps we take should be carefully evaluated, and trade-offs anticipated.
... The approach can uncover similar 'routes' (geographies) travelled towards unhealthy or otherwise unfavourable ends, but also the 'roots' (histories and cultures) that link universal problems to more situated meanings and practices (cf. Jackson, 2015). In this way, comparative ethnography provides an important counterbalance to quantitative metrics for intercountry comparison, such as global health indicators. ...
Public health interventions that involve strategies to re-localise food fail in part because they pay insufficient attention to the global history of industrial food and agriculture. In this paper we use the method of comparative ethnography and the concept of structural violence to illustrate how historical and geographical patterns related to colonialism and industrialisation (e.g. agrarian change, power relations and trade dependencies) hinder efforts to address diet-related non-communicable diseases on two small islands. We find comparative ethnography provides a useful framework for cross-country analysis of public health programmes that can complement quantitative analysis. At the same time, the concept of structural violence enables us to make sense of qualitative material and link the failure of such programmes to wider historical and geographical processes. We use ethnographic research carried out from April to August 2013 and from June to July 2014 in Trinidad (with follow-up online interviews in 2018) and in Nauru from February to May 2010 and August 2010 to February 2011. Our island case studies share commonalities that point to similar experiences of colonialism and industrialisation and comparable health-related challenges faced in everyday life.
... Peter Jackson interprets social fears as referring to threats to the order of social meanings and to physical bodily integrity (Jackson 2015). Following Jackson, I define food fears as a bundle of collective emotions, values, narratives and social practices which emerge when individuals or groups perceive their social and physical safety within the food system as endangered. ...
The article investigates food fears in the context of the everyday food practices of customers of farmers' markets in Małopolska Voivodeship, Poland. The qualitative analysis of 15 individual in-depth interviews mostly concerns topics of negative evaluation and narratives justifying the exclusion of specific products, food practices and institutions of the food chain. In particular, the study focuses on ways of defining food fears, such as chemicals in food, processed food, suspicious appearance and freshness of products and concerns associated with the place of purchase. An in-depth analysis of these topics reveals broader criticism of the food system within the narratives of the research subjects. This concerns redefinitions of relations between economic order and social institutions, removing particular cultural meaning from it, fragmentation and distancing of the production process from consumption, a lack of transparency in the food chain, and the associated ignorance. The diagnosis resulting from the interviews is expressed as food fears: it has ramifications connected to the engagement and practices of avoidance or minimisation of food threats and strategies of resistance. The analysis employs Mary Douglas's structuralist theory of defining through negation and Peter Jackson's food anxieties theory, as well as concepts of ignorance, distrust and social embeddedness of economic practices.
... Against the background of the global corporate food regime, food distribution networks have become as globalised as they have become obscured, and a new quality of food safety concerns, health issues, and distrust towards food have emerged and certainly also constitute one of the most publicly denounced problems with food in contemporary Vietnam (see Part II, this volume). The global span of BSE (bovin spongiform encephalopathy) originating in Europe in the 1990s, large incidences of avian flu (Inglis and Gimlin 2009, 20), and the contamination of baby formula with melanin in China (Jackson 2015) are but a few of many contemporary food safety concerns. These are often seen as related to the globalised food system's structural characteristic of 'distanciation' between food production and consumption and between the realms of the rural and the urban (Bricas 1993;Wilk 2009;Figuié and Bricas 2010). ...
This introductory chapter to the edited volume Food Anxiety in Globalising Vietnam puts food in Vietnam in global perspective in terms of agricultural development, food system modernisation, and socio-cultural relations, and conceptually outlines food anxiety as the book’s common lens. This lens proves central for understanding the ‘dangerous’ side of food as material matter and symbolic meaning. ‘Food anxiety’ uncovers the politico-economic context and the socio-cultural embeddedness of eating and the struggles of urban consumers and food producers with ambivalences around the security and quality of food, their bodily integrity and identity. From the perspective of critical development studies, this chapter opens up the following discussions around power and the inclusive and exclusive nature of food globalisations in local contexts.
... Others evaluate the importance of everyday meals by interrogating the role of social anxiety (Jackson, 2015;Jackson and Everts, 2010). Two insights from Jackson's (2015) recent contributions are key to contextualizing everyday meals in the Global North. ...
This review uses the concepts of place and space to provide insights into recent critical geographic approaches to food and agriculture. For alternative foods, the use of the term “alternative” has changed markedly from indicating a contrast with conventional food to signifying a broader commitment to progressive politics. In contrast, everyday meals highlight how people navigate conflicting claims on their limited resources. For everyday meals, the moral economy is a flexible concept that reveals how food connects people both economically and morally. Food creates powerful connections for linking people together through food chains, regional identities, and progressive politics. This critical review of the role of place for food raises important questions about how progressive politics are applied to different places and the evolving role of critical food scholars.
... Negotiating access and working closely with these companies required an acknowledgement of the complex "power geometries" involved in such collaborative research (cf. Jackson, 2015b). This involved convincing these firms that our research was sufficiently relevant to their commercial priorities to warrant their time commitment while maintaining critical distance and academic integrity. ...
This paper adopts a material-semiotic approach to explore the multiple ontologies of ‘freshness’ as a quality of food. The analysis is based on fieldwork in the UK and Portugal, with particular emphasis on fish, poultry, and fruit and vegetables. Using evidence from archival research, ethnographic observation and interviews with food businesses (including major retailers and their suppliers) plus qualitative household-level research with consumers, the paper unsettles the conventional view of freshness as a single, stable quality of food. Rather than approaching the multiplicity of freshness as a series of social constructions (different perspectives on essentially the same thing), we identify its multiple ontologies. The analysis explores their enactment as uniform and consistent, local and seasonal, natural and authentic, and sentient and lively. The paper traces the effects of these enactments across the food system, drawing out the significance of our approach for current and future geographical studies of food.
... There is responsibility for those closest to food procurement and provisioning to consume (eat) and to foster consumption (eating) in others. Scholars such as Jackson (2015) show how this structural responsibility is also carried in the body through the guilt and anxieties that surround wasting food. The responsibility of food waste management in the household is unevenly distributed, often along gendered lines. ...
p>Food waste in Canada is estimated to amount to $31 billion per year, with approximately half of this waste occurring in households (Gooch & Felfel, 2014). However, household food waste studies remain underrepresented in the literature, particularly in a Canadian context. This paper calls on feminist food scholars to contribute to this gap by incorporating food waste analyses into their food research. This study uses a photovoice methodology and feminist analytical perspectives to investigate the moment when food became “waste” in 22 households in Guelph, Ontario. Findings suggest that food waste production is representative of forms of foodwork (DeVault, 1991), and that attention to food wasting reveals embodied knowledges of food and interactions with the food system. We contend that scholars and those concerned with household waste reduction should examine and consider how the responsibility for food waste management has been constructed to fall along gendered lines. The intersection of these findings with ongoing research in feminist food scholarship reveals that feminist food scholars are well placed to contribute to food waste studies.</p
... Ein spezieller Fall der gesellschaftlich-alimentären Orientierungsfunktion betrifft die gesundheitliche Seite der Ernährung. Zwar ist Essen zunächst eine biologische Notwendigkeit und versorgt den Organismus mit zum Überleben erforderlichen Nährstoffen; andererseits können spezifische Lebensmittel auch gesundheitsschädlich sein und unangemessene Essgewohnheiten auf Dauer eine Gefahr für das leibliche Wohl darstellen, weshalb die Nahrungsaufnahme auch immer potenziell mit Ängsten und Ungewissheiten verbunden ist (Carmichael, 2002;Jackson, 2015). Kollektiv geteilte Esspraxen als Ausdruck allgemein geprüfter alimentärer Empfehlungen können zur Reduzierung dieser Ängste beitragen (Warde, 1997;Carmichael, 2002). ...
Why do people eat animals despite their morally-affective relation to other sentient beings? In this paper, I argue that an adaptation of one‘s eating behaviour to personal animal-ethical standards is accompanied by a series of emotional, social and identitary challenges. For many agents, such challenges cannot be overcome. Instead, they draw upon rationalizations in order to soothe the cognitive dissonance prompted by their ambivalent relation to animals.
... On the one hand, there is interpersonal trust and, on the other, trust in institutions and expert systems ( Kjaernes, 2013;Wilson et al., 2013). Examples of interpersonal trust are consumers' trust in social networks that surround locally produced and retailed foods ( Eden et al., 2008;Green et al., 2003;Meyer et al., 2012), while consumers' trust in food-regulation policies is an example of institutional trust ( Jackson, 2015;Kjaernes, 2013;Henderson et al., 2012). The main focus of most research on food and trust has focused on an adult population (e.g. ...
Purpose
The authors used role-playing with subsequent focus group interviews in order to explore how adolescents negotiate conflicting food messages they encounter in their everyday lives. The purpose of this paper is to describe adolescents’ perceptions about different messages and their sources and to explore the trust they place in such sources.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 31 adolescents aged 15-16 years participated in role-playing with subsequent focus group interviews. A qualitative content analysis was used to analyse the data.
Findings
The adolescents depicted an everyday life with multiple and different messages about food and eating. In addition, they stated that these messages were conveyed by a wide range of sources at different levels, for example, by parents, teachers, sports coaches and media. The messages from different sources were conflicting and covered many different perspectives on food and eating. When negotiating food choices in the role-playing and in the focus group discussing how to handle different and conflicting messages, trust became visible. The trustworthiness of messages and trust in their sources were associated with several important aspects in regard to whether or not the messages were based on knowledge about food and nutrition, care for the person receiving the messages, and/or commercial interest. In addition, the results indicate that the situation and the social relationship to the person providing the message were of importance for trustworthiness.
Originality/value
This study is novel as it uses role-playing as a research method and describes the trust adolescents place on food messages and their sources. To understand the factors that enhance such trust is important for the development and provision of education, information, and other health-promotion activities related to food in order to support and strengthen adolescents’ critical reflections on food messages from different sources.
... These new platforms provide diverse types of information: where foods or their ingredients are grown and manufactured, which ingredients or nutrients various foods contain, what health or environmental effects these foods are reported to have, and who owns food products or brands. Together, these strands of information reflect the growing interest in, and concern with, questions of food transparency in the context of food-related anxieties among consumers in the global North ( Jackson, 2015). What is unique about the ways in which food transparency is conceptualized in the digital realm? ...
This book explores the role of digital media technologies in creating new forms of consumer activism and engagement with food, eating and food systems. Food is an increasingly prominent subject of engagement online, from the aesthetics of cooking to the ethics of shopping. This book adopts a multi-disciplinary approach, bringing together food studies, and science and technology studies. The role of social media, apps, and other online technologies is considered in relation to activist and consumer issues in the UK, Australia, Europe and South America. Digital Food Activism explores a variety of contemporary topics, including Twitter and diabetes, hashtag activism and the prospect of 3D printed food. © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Tanja Schneider, Karin Eli, Catherine Dolan and Stanley Ulijaszek. All rights reserved.
... If we juxtapose in this rationale the rural idyll image, then children can be portrayed in greater harmony and familiarity, and having greater knowledge about nature, animals, farming and food production methods. And yet, these claims can be challenged by some studies which show that teenagers in urban areas understand better food production methods than their rural counterparts, despite the latter are physically closer to agricultural sites they show less social and political awareness of food production (Jackson, 2015). ...
This paper examines continuity and change in the bases of recommendations about dishes to prepare and serve in the household in Britain between 1968 and 2016. Employing a content analysis of recipes in widely circulating women’s magazines, it compares a sample of recipes from 2015–16 with ones from 1968 and 1992 analyzed previously in. In this follow-up study, new data are collected, using the same coding frame, with findings interpreted through the same conceptual framework, to classify recommendations about domestic food preparation with reference to four “culinary antinomies” expressing symbolic, structural oppositions between (1) health and indulgence, (2) economy and extravagance, (3) convenience and care, and (4) novelty and tradition. The changing prevalence of these principles of recommendation is described. Discussion revolves around interpretation of the social significance of changing recommendations, modification of the conceptual framework, and methodological aspects of the measurement of social change.
This essay examines the emergence of crayfish and crayfish rice production in Chongzhou, Sichuan as a product of China’s agrarian transition and at the conjuncture of several forms of food anxiety. To earn revenue, the Chongzhou government has encouraged the cultivation of crayfish. Once a local peasant food, crayfish has been rebranded as a luxury item and made a centerpiece of local placemaking efforts. However, Chongzhou is also the site of an Agricultural Functional Zone, and is designated as a site for grain agriculture, in response to the Chinese state’s longstanding anxieties about grain self-sufficiency. Thus, rice is grown together with the crayfish. To make it appealing, crayfish rice is marketed as high quality and ecologically friendly, responding to the state’s biopolitical concerns about the “quality” of the population, as well as to middle class consumers’ sense of distinction and their pervasive consumer anxieties about food safety and environmental pollution.
Veganism is the subject of an increasingly diverse body of social scientific research, yet it remains relatively understudied in geography. Meanwhile, contemporary cultural commentaries note how veganism has gone mainstream, with critics warning of veganism’s corporate nature – expressed in the rise of what we term ‘Big Veganism’. We argue that food geographers are well placed to examine these trends. We first review vegan studies work beyond geography that examines and critiques the mainstreaming of veganism. We focus on literature that explores multiple contested modes of veganism, veganism as praxis in place and the rise of corporate veganism as useful foundations for geographers to build on, particularly in light of currently unfolding developments in vegan cultures and practice. Taking this work forward, we identify four conceptual traditions from research in food geographies – following foodways, alternative food networks and the cultural and material politics of eating – to develop a ‘vegan food geographies’ programme that aims to advance critical geographic work on veganism and the emerging implications of its contemporary mainstreaming.
A major food contamination scandal occurred in Sri Lanka in 2013 after it was alleged that Fonterra dairy products contained chemicals known to have a negative effect on human health. This crisis was influenced by unique factors that, I argue, are particular to the social and cultural context of Sri Lanka. In this article, I will be focusing on several such factors: (a) specific considerations about the Sri Lankan dairy industry; (b) the growing influence of the worship of the deity Kiri Amma, a god that is associated uniquely with dairy and dairy production; (c) the common belief that milk possesses a unique transformative and curative property; and (d) prevailing food conspiracies that maintain that external groups are seeking to harm the Sinhalese people by purposefully poisoning confectionary and dairy products. By considering these factors, we can better understand how inter-ethnic and inter-religious tensions can precipitate in Sri Lanka.
The article demonstrates how food contributed to the Europeanisation of British culture between 1960 and 1975, the period leading up to the 1975 Referendum on membership of the European Community. The analysis identifies the meanings and values associated with Europe in cooking columns in two British broadsheet newspapers, TheTimes and the Observer, and examines how people were encouraged to make identifications with Europe. However, the article demonstrates how the meanings associated with Europe were not monolithic and were inflected by class and gender. In particular, continental culinary practices were associated with the tastes and dispositions of emergent new middle-class formations. More generally, the analysis demonstrates how these representations of European food offered middle-class people ways to experiment with feeling European in their everyday lives. In a Brexit context in which much research has asked why British people rejected Europe, the article seeks to contribute to a parallel history of how so many other British people came to identify as European through engagements with popular culture.
The concluding chapter summarizes the core arguments by reviewing three themes that run throughout the preceding chapters: the dominance of the clock, commodification and acceleration in framing understandings of time; coordination and synchronization of everyday activities and the declining strength of collectively timed events; and, the formation and reproduction of socio-temporal rhythms through the organization of practices. It highlights three important contributions for social scientific understandings of time and society: the necessity of analysing multiple temporalities; to establish that consumption and temporalities are indivisible; and, temporalities cannot be explained through recourse to the discretionary time allocation choices of individuals. Returning to contemporary societal problems, particularly sustainable consumption and well-being, it is argued that conventional approaches which treat time as an objective variable to be intervened in—by substituting, extending, dis-placing or resisting the allocation of activities in (clock) time—overlook the capacity of ‘temporal thinking’ for providing solutions to societal problems. Rather, focus on the organization of practices and the socio-temporal rhythms that they shape offers alternative options for addressing major societal issues. Such an approach would place emphasis on the temporal alignment of practices and re-institution of collectively timed events.
Insufficient capacity in domestic food production, just-in-time supply chains and Brexit-related labour market challenges have weakened the UK’s food system. Building redundancy and diversity in the food system is essential for resilience in the COVID-19 recovery.
Laura J. Hilton’s chapter examines the perceptions and reality of German wartime and postwar hunger and food scarcity. Hilton’s chapter demonstrates the centrality of food in the postwar rumor culture, as Germans questioned its origins, purity, costs, the rationing system and the black market. Rumors revealed how Germans re-remembered their past. They downplayed wartime food shortages and magnified the postwar scarcities, while displacing responsibility for them onto outsiders. They then linked post-1948 food stability with the resumption of control over their own economy. By constructing narratives that re-centered the responsibility for food shortages to non-Germans and created alternative explanations for deprivations, Germans sought to re-establish both their sense of self and control over their country, cementing their victimhood in the wake of the Second World War.
This paper adds to critical studies of risk and mothering by illustrating and conceptualising how risk is constructed in public health advice and mothers’ accounts of weaning. Previous research points towards a gap between public health scientific definitions of risk and mothers’ contextual understandings and experience of handling complex and often conflicting risks linked to food and feeding. It has been suggested that public health discourse misses out on or even silences risks defined by women in their everyday care practices. Therefore, our aim is to conceptualise and map various co-existing constructions of risk and discuss how an awareness of the multiplicity of risk can inform public health advice that take mothers’ point of view into account. Using the concept ‘riskscape’, we explore and compare how public health and mothers’ constructions of risk diverge and overlap. Our findings illustrate how mothers belong to a community of practice where weaning is understood and practiced in relation to their everyday life and eating practices involving multiple concerns that are not addressed in public health advice, especially the wider food and information landscape. The study also indicate that this divergence can provoke feelings of insecurity and anxiety among mothers and make public health advice seem less relevant. In sum, our findings suggest a need for public health to acknowledge mothers’ experience of weaning as a compound practice similar to their own eating practices and to widen the present focus on risk as a domestic and individual responsibility.
This article explores the role of informal food spaces and flows in Islamabad, Pakistan. This paper aims to address two key questions in the areas of food and urbanism in Islamabad: How do the city’s residents perceive and experience the so-called “non-urban” food spaces and flows in their everyday lives? How do these spaces contribute to a nuanced understanding of global food systems? This paper considers that these spaces are critical in engendering nostalgia for past food habits and behaviours, a trigger for reflexive consumerism, and sites for reconnecting with different aspects of the country’s food system. The paper also explores how such spaces can be conceptualised within urbanism and geography, in the context of Islamabad’s unique spatial and socio-cultural identity. Informed by urbanism and food geography, this paper considers analytical and theoretical strategies for advancing the study of the urban in the global south, and specifically in Pakistan.
This paper offers a critical examination of the narrative landscape that has emerged with a new movement of alternative proteins intended as substitutes for conventional meat, milk and other animal-based food products. The alternative protein approaches analysed include edible insects, plant-based proteins and cellular agriculture, the latter of which encompasses ‘cultured’ or ‘clean’ meat, milk and egg products produced in vitro via cell-science methods. We build on previous research that has analysed the promissory narratives specific to cultured/clean meat by examining the key promises that have worked across the broader alternative protein movement. In doing so, we develop a five-fold typology that outlines the distinct yet interconnected claims that have operated in alternative protein promotional discourses to date. The second part of the paper examines the counter-narratives that have emerged in response to alternative protein claims from different stakeholders linked to conventional livestock production. We offer a second typology of three counter-narratives that have so far characterised these responses. Through mapping this narrative landscape, we show how different types of ‘goodness’ have been ascribed by alternative protein and conventional livestock stakeholders to their respective approaches. Moreover, our analysis reveals a series of tensions underpinning these contested food futures, many of which have long histories in broader debates over what constitutes better (protein) food production and consumption. The paper's discussion contributes to ongoing research across the social sciences on the ontological politics of (good) food, and the key role of narratives in constructing and contesting visions of ‘better’ food futures.
In this article, we offer a contribution to the ongoing study of food by advancing a conceptual framework and interdisciplinary research agenda – what we term ‘food system resilience’. In recent years, the concept of resilience has been extensively used in a variety of fields, but not always consistently or holistically. Here we aim to theorise systematically resilience as an analytical concept as it applies to food systems research. To do this, we engage with and seek to extend current understandings of resilience across different disciplines. Accordingly, we begin by exploring the different ways in which the concept of resilience is understood and used in current academic and practitioner literatures - both as a general concept and as applied specifically to food systems research. We show that the social-ecological perspective, rooted in an appreciation of the complexity of systems, carries significant analytical potential. We first underline what we mean by the food system and relate our understanding of this term to those commonly found in the extant food studies literature. We then apply our conception to the specific case of the UK. Here we distinguish between four subsystems at which our ‘resilient food systems’ can be applied. These are, namely, the agro-food system; the value chain; the retail-consumption nexus; and the governance and regulatory framework. On the basis of this conceptualisation we provide an interdisciplinary research agenda, using the case of the UK to illustrate the sorts of research questions and innovative methodologies that our food systems resilience approach is designed to promote.
This chapter studies Romanian fruit preservation universe with its specific techniques and different ways of experiencing. Originating from the socialist shortages, the practice of preparing food preserves in jars was transformed into modern, creative domestic leisure of Romanian middle-class consumers. The appearance of local market of artisan preserves, new meanings, and new sources of value for the preserve jars are outlined.
This article analyzes how strategies for capitalist accumulation drove the industrialization of chicken husbandry and increased consumption of chicken products in Japan. By the start of the Showa era, leaders in the Japanese chicken industry sought to promote larger and more productive operations through the adoption of Western breeds. Following the upheaval of World War II, the US facilitated three major changes for Japanese chicken husbandry: expanded grain exports from the US in the 1950s; the importation of specialized breeds in the 1960s; and the Japanese industry’s emulation of American corporations in the 1970s. The connections between Mitsubishi and KFC-Japan illustrate how Japanese firms implemented new organizational structures that allowed them to profit from the chicken industry in multiple ways. I suggest that the increases in consumption of chicken meat and eggs in the Japanese diet indicate the advancement of capitalist strategies for overcoming the barriers to industrialization.
Addressing the spatial dimensions of risk, this paper examines the multiple ways that consumers negotiate the ëriskscapesí associated with the consumption of convenience food. It explores how convenience food poses a range of risks and potential ways of mitigating those risks. Drawing on empirical research from Germany and the UK, the paper demonstrates how food risks should be contextualized within the practices of everyday life and how consumer understandings of risk differ from expert risk assessments. The paper locates a number of different sites within the riskscape associated with convenience food, going beyond the focus on food safety and security that are the main concerns of health authorities and government advisors. Deicit models of food risk are criticised and alternatives are proposed that emphasise the socially embedded nature of risk within the practices of everyday life.
Drawing particularly on the case study of workplace canteens as a form of collective food provisioning, this chapter explores the spatial organization of convenience food. The chapter begins by considering the anxieties that are attached to the widening spaces of food production, distribution and retail, often described in terms of increasing ‘food miles’. More complex spatialities are then described including spatial relations, places and spatial changes, offering an alternative framing of convenience food. The specific spatialities of canteen food are then addressed in terms of networks and circulation, food preparation and eating spaces.
This article analyses the reasons given by some inhabitants of Palermo, a city in southern Italy, to explain their consumption of organic foods. It does so to uncover the role played by perceptions of the ubiquity of pollution in the construction of contemporary culinary anxieties. The article shows that some Palermitans compared organic to conventional foods on the basis of notions of healthiness, choosing the former to avoid ingesting harmful substances. This is in line with a popular interpretation of organic food consumption as a means to avoid risks originating in agriculture and the food processing industry. However, concerns about food quality were not the sole motivation offered by research participants. Eating organics was also seen as a way to mitigate risks deriving from the local urban environment. While this double risk burden reflects views of pollution that are typical of contemporary environmental discourse, participants’ references to urban settings in their discussions of organic food are an aspect that is not usually addressed in analyses of this form of consumption. The article suggests therefore that ideas about the spatial properties of pollution play an important role in explaining people's culinary anxieties and the attractiveness of organics, the consumption of which is seen as capable of offsetting contamination from a diverse array of (mostly local) factors.
This article uses ethnography from the city of Palermo (Italy) to analyze organic food’s role in the culinary anxieties that characterize late modernity. Popular interpretations see the organic phenomenon as the product of a new kind of society in which some consumers regularly reflect on various sorts of environmental risk and how to avoid them. The article argues that this interpretation, while not without empirical grounding, is limited by the privileging of cognitive forms of knowledge over embodied ones in people’s relationship to food. Distinguishing between the risk society and risk practice, the article discusses the concomitant importance of forms of knowledge based on the body, the senses, and corporeal memory, showing how the cognitive and the embodied influence each other to form a local risk culture of organic foods.
This chapter discusses how the diverse materials and materialities, places and traces, qualities and demands that are made of food, can be managed. It reviews how the UK post-war and particularly post-BSE experience of food production and consumption have shaped the current suite of logics and practices through which food safety is regulated. The chapter outlines how a meat adulteration event, and discusses the issue of Campylobacter in poultry. It draws on fieldwork undertaken on the practices of food safety through the UK food ‘chain’ to explore the extent to which the technology of inspection offers a locus of the kind of regulatory expertise and skilled practice that is required to attend to the situations of food safety. Finally, the chapter focuses on how current pressures on this expertise and skilled practice are risking its marginalisation and indeed loss from the landscape of food safety regulation, itself a situation with potentially seriously consequences.
This chapter considers fieldwork conducted after a series of infectious and food-borne disease episodes to suggest that, when it comes to disease risks, people are more often dealing with too much rather than too little information. How this surplus is managed becomes a critical question in terms of whether or not disease risks capture a public. The chapter investigates how disease publics might be assembled when this surfeit is taken into account. It explores how people manage their own knowledge of infectious and particularly zoonotic disease threats in relation to scientific, public health, health education and media understandings of zoonotic disease risks. The chapter begins with a brief account of the media background to the empirical work, and outlines some of the common strategies to 'publicising disease'. Finally, the chapter reports the findings as a means to emphasise the difficulties of and requirements for raising disease publics.
This paper advances geographical perspectives on household sustainability by extending the range of insights from consumption scholarship that are brought to bear on the issue. Research that links consumption to the dynamics of variously sustainable practices currently dominate, resulting in a particular and partial reading of material culture. I suggest that geographical approaches to the social life of things may yield new insights into materiality and household sustainability. Specifically, I argue that ‘following the thing’ – which is typically focused on commodity chains – could usefully be extended into people's homes. This is not introduced as a way to acknowledge the connections between points in a network, rather, it is positioned as a set of theoretical and methodological resources that can be utilised to explore the movement and placing of things as they move through a critical juncture – in this case the household. To illustrate, I present material drawn from two empirical studies of households in the UK. The first is an ethnographically-informed study of how food becomes waste; the second is a quantitative survey of laundry habits. Attention is paid to the ways in which the ongoing categorisation and valuation of things shape their trajectories and move them in directions that give rise to (adverse) environmental impacts. To conclude I sketch out an agenda for future studies, consider how a focus on households can yield more comprehensive biographies of things, and address the implications of this analysis both for consumption scholarship and for engagement with sustainability research and policy beyond human geography.
Chapter 6 uncovers how film destabilises and plays with the notion of food and wholesome culinary experiences – which often encapsulate the cultural goodness of Western societies – by upsetting the cultural stability of the dinner table. Far from evoking any notion of commensality and interpersonal bonding, the dinner table is exposed as a site of loathing, violence, subverted bodily intimacies, and cultural alienation. In continuation of the spatial narratives of abhorrence and fear, Chapter 6 operates as a counterpart to Chapter 5, as it would be critically counterproductive to explore horror instances connected to food preparation without continuing the discussion to include spaces of consumption.
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