Learning from the Corner Store

Abstract

The problem of changing food habits has once again become a major public issue in the past decade in the United States. One of the main strategies developed by food reformers to change popular eating habits is to increase access to fresh food in poor urban areas identified as “food deserts,” in an attempt to address the obesity epidemic and to revitalize the local economy by creating “healthy,” “sustainable” environments. Based on a participant observation study in a large city in the Southeastern United States, I will start by discussing two of these initiatives: a farmers' market and a Community Supported Agriculture program. Although both were located in underserved communities, they failed to reach their poor black residents, attracting instead a clientele of white middle class professionals. To account for the urban poor's resistance to alternative food practices, I then turn to the results of an ethnographic study of consumption practices in an inner-city convenience store, where economic constraints and distinction strategies help to shape its customers' tastes for energy-dense, high-calorie foods. While these data are consistent with quantitative studies underlying the importance of economic access over physical access to food, the ethnographic method has the advantage of bringing food consumption back into its social setting, allowing it to reveal its significance in the competition for status and respectability, which take on different meanings in different classes and cultures.