The paper builds on recent flexitarianism scholarship by approaching this heterogeneous dietary category as a socio-cultural and political economic, rather than just a psychological phenomenon. It does this by drawing on Harris's (2009) conceptualisation of alternative food provisioning activities and subject-making as a 'politics of the possible'. The paper addresses the following questions: does flexitarianism and the making of flexitarian subjectivities represent a 'politics of the possible' and if so how; what are the limits of these politics and how might these limits be overcome? Empirically, the paper undertakes a qualitative analysis of UK national print news media coverage of flexitarianism and semistructured interviews with self-identified flexitarians. Data from these two sources are interwoven in discussion of themes that provide some evidence in support of flexitarianism as a politics of the possible, but which also draw attention to the limits of these politics. The paper concludes that only by addressing these limits can a full and critical assessment be made of flexitarianism's contribution to a food system less dependent on animal-based foods.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.