Visceral Difference: Variations in Feeling (Slow) Food

Abstract

This paper responds to concerns over a lack of diversity in alternative food movements by entertaining the possibility of understanding difference as a visceral process—a process of bodily feeling/sensation. Participatory research within and around the Slow Food (SF) movement reveals the complex role of feelings in motivating food actions and activism. On the whole, the cocreated data from this research illustrate that food is never ingested by itself: in the body, molecular connections develop between food and a countless array of other factors. Thus, food and food movements come to feel differently in different bodies as a result of inner-connected biological and social forces. In paying attention to such biosocial processes alternative food movements like SF may develop new under-standings as to why they activate some people to participate in alternative food practices while chilling others. Accordingly the paper suggests that attentiveness to visceral feeling could enhance the ability of food movements to mobilize across difference.