Abstract
Abstract: Through the disjunctive comparison of experiences of grocery shopping and food consumption in England and Italy at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper explores material cultures of care among immediate kinship and metaphorical or extended kinship i.e., the nation. The paper maintains that the ruptures produced by the outbreak of the pandemic allow scholars to resort to the extraordinary as a diagnostic of the ordinary: the mystic disguise of material everydayness can be effectively studied as it suddenly acquires a new salience through the experience of the pandemic. With this in mind, the paper first looks at kinship ties and gender roles at the household level as negotiated through material cultures of care. Subsequently, by zooming out the concentric circles of mutual belonging, it explores everyday and taken-for-granted material cultures of nationalism. The supermarket emerges as a symbolic battleground where to defend the nation, feed its body and identity. Keywords: COVID-19; grocery shopping; kinship; gender; banal nationalism.
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