Abstract
With “consumer demand” credited with driving major changes in the food industry related to food quality, safety, environmental, and social concerns, the contemporary politics of food has become characterized by a variety of attempts to redefine food consumption as an expression of citizenship that speaks of collective rights and responsibilities. Neoliberal political orthodoxy constructs such citizenship in terms of the ability of individuals to monitor and regulate their own behavior as entrepreneurs and as consumers. By contrast, many proponents of alternative food networks promote the idea that food citizenship is expressed through participation in social arrangements based on solidarity and coordinated action rather than on contractual and commoditized relationships between so-called “producers” and “consumers.” This paper thus focuses its analysis on the strategies used to mobilize people as consumers of particular products and the ways, in turn, in which people use their consumption choices as expressions of social agency or citizenship. In particular, the paper examines how the marketing, pricing, and distribution of foods interact with food standards to enable and constrain specific expressions of food citizenship. It is argued that narrow and stereotypical constructions of the “ethical consumer” help to limit the access of particular people and environmental values, such as biodiversity, to the ethical marketplace.
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Notes
In 2002, the organic market grew approximately 12% in North America, 8% in Europe, and 15–20% in Australia (Sahota 2004). Following several years of growth between 20% and 40%, the UK experienced a slowing of expansion mirrored in other European countries with comparatively large organic markets (Sahota 2004). Average retail price premiums for organic foods range from 10% to 15% in Germany to 80% in Australia and 10–100% in the US and UK (Halpin and Brueckner 2004b; Sligh and Christman 2003).
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The author would like to acknowledge financial support provided by the Australian Research Council for the project “The production and regulation of agricultural biodiversity” (Project No. DP0664599).
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Lockie, S. Responsibility and agency within alternative food networks: assembling the “citizen consumer”. Agric Hum Values 26, 193–201 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-008-9155-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-008-9155-8