Positioning Food Cultures: 'Alternative' Food as Distinctive Consumer Practice.

Jessica Paddock

doi:10.1177/0038038515585474

Abstract

Many sociological studies to date have explored the role of food in marking distinctions between groups. Less well understood is how ‘alternative’ means of food consumption become figured in such relations. Drawing on accounts of food practice derived from 20 in-depth interviews and a two-year period of participant observation, this article considers the role of class culture in the practice of alternative food consumption. As participants speak their position, expressions of class arise through discussions of food practice. Having explored how food plays a part in marking boundaries of distinction between foods ‘for us’ and ‘for them’, we are reminded that in reproducing certain ideas about proper eating, we confine our imagining of alternative food futures to a limited politics of the possible. The article highlights implications for future development of equitable alternatives to conventional foodways.

Highlights

As awareness of the environmental effects of advanced capitalism grows, we witness the progression of ‘ethical’ (Harrison et al, 2005), ‘alternative’ (Goodman and Goodman, 2009) or ‘sustainable’ (Jackson, 2006) consumption movements
For Littler (2009), ethical consumption is considered an act of sanctimonious shopping, which she describes as a means of extolling one’s moral virtues and displaying the ethical self to others
This article argues that there is a further element playing out through such practices where alternative food consumption is figured in processes that demarcate social groups

Summary

Introduction

While shortening food supply chains and grounding them within local economies has become a core focus for the wider project of sustainable development (Arce and Marsden, 1993). 20 in-depth interviews, a survey and documentary analysis reveal how particular ideas about ‘good’, and this case, ‘alternative’ food consumption are used as a means of drawing boundaries between social groups as distinctions are made in talk between foods that are for ‘us’ and those that are for ‘them’ This is noted as characteristic of British ethical consumer movements, which Varul (2009) finds is less pervasive in a German context. Building on Bourdieu’s concept of class as a relative position, Southerton (2002), Sayer (2005a), Lawler (2005) and Lamont (1992) consider the moral dimensions of this process This is significant when considering the practice of ‘alternative’ food consumption, for is food in its most conventional form a first need of the human body, but in its ‘alternative’ form, appears to become figured in evaluative judgements about what is good or bad, both morally and aesthetically. While Murdoch et al (2000) suggest that concern for food quality empowers at the local level, this article argues that such a realignment and turn to local embeddedness – as represented by the farmers’ market studied here – can reproduce a balance of power that favours well-to-do consumers (Nygård and Storstad, 1998)

Methods

A Field of ‘Alternative’ Food Consumption

Conclusions