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This paper complements the preceding one by Clarke et al (2004a) which looked at the long-term impact of retail restructuring on consumer choice at the local level. While the previous paper was based on quantitative evidence from survey research, this paper draws on the qualitative phases of the same three-year study, aiming to understand how the changing forms of retail provision are experienced at the neighbourhood level within selected households. The empirical material is drawn from focus groups, accompanied shopping trips, diaries, interviews and kitchen visits with eight households in two contrasting neighbourhoods in the Portsmouth area. The data demonstrate that consumer choice involves judgements of taste, quality and value as well as more 'objective' questions of convenience, price and accessibility. These judgements are related to households' differential levels of cultural capital and involve ethical and moral considerations as well as more mundane considerations of practical utility. Our evidence suggests that many of the terms that are conventionally advanced as explanations of consumer choice (such as 'convenience', 'value' and 'habit') have very different meanings according to different household circumstances. To understand these meanings requires us to relate consumers' at-store behaviour to the domestic context in which their consumption choices are embedded. Our research demonstrates that consumer choice between stores can be understood in terms of accessibility and convenience, while choice within stores involves notions of value, price and quality. We conclude that choice between and within stores is strongly mediated by consumers' household context reflecting the extent to which shopping practices are embedded within consumers' domestic routines and complex everyday lives.

In recent years there have been repeated calls for a convergence between ‘the cultural’ and ‘the economic’. This paper provides a specific take on these issues through an exploration of the contested geographies of contemporary commercial culture. Traditionally, ‘culture’ has been associated with meaning and creativity, with works of the imagination and aesthetic practices that are far removed from the pursuit of economic profit. By contrast, ‘commerce’ has conventionally been regarded with disdain by critically minded social scientists, signalling a vulgar and materialistic world, devoid of morality, where human agency is subordinated to the logic of capital. This paper aims to challenge such dualistic thinking by exploring the commodification of cultural difference and by demonstrating that the rational calculus of the market is inescapably embedded in a range of cultural practices. The argument moves from an analysis of linear commodity chains to an exploration of more complex circuits and networks, illustrated with examples from contemporary commodity culture, looking specifically at the food and fashion sectors. Rather than demonstrating complexity for its own sake, the objective is to identify new forms of understanding and new possibilities for intervention in what can sometimes seem like an all-encompassing ‘consumer culture’ where every act of resistance is immediately recuperated in successive rounds of commodification.

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This paper presents a critical assessment of the concept of transnationalism and its place within the current refiguration of cultural geography. Identifying three specific concerns with current theorizations of transnationalism (regarding the concept's scope, specificity and politics), the paper discusses the widely perceived need to ‘ground’ the study of transnationalism in specific empirical research. It argues that this discussion has been unhelpfully dominated by an overemphasis on identifying transnational migrant and diasporic communities. The paper highlights the authors' research with a range of food and fashion firms working between Britain and the Indian subcontinent to argue that an analysis of commodity culture provides an alternative way of advancing our understanding of contemporary transnationality. This approach suggests that transnational space can be recognized as both multidimensional and multiply inhabited. The paper concludes by outlining the alternative ways in which attention to commodity culture helps ‘ground’ the concept of transnationalism.

Focusing on the commodification of various forms of cultural difference, this paper reviews recent work within the 'globalization' and 'creolization' paradigms, outlining an agenda for future research. Rather than condemning commodification as an unwarranted threat to the 'authenticity' of local cultures, the paper argues for a more complex understanding of people's relationship with the world of goods. Using a variety of examples, it is argued that the 'traffic in things' is associated with a wide range of meanings and a diversity of responses. Informed by recent debates in anthropology and material culture studies, it is suggested that geographical metaphors (such as distance and displacement) provide a more productive way of engaging with contemporary commodity cultures than do visual metaphors (such as unveiling or unmasking). Other means of transcending the distinction between cultural and economic geographies are also discussed. key words commodification consumption material culture cultural politics

Focusing on the resilience of distinctive local consumption cultures, this paper challenges some of the more sweeping claims that have been advanced in the name of 'globalization'. Thinking about a 'globalizing' rather than a fully 'globalized' world encourages us to examine the deeply contested nature of the concept and to explore the geographically uneven nature of recent economic, political and cultural transformations. This paper approaches globalization as a site of struggle rather than as an established fact, emphasizing the need for empirically grounded studies of the impact of 'globalization' on consumer cultures in different geographical contexts. The paper examines the way that producers have 'customized' their products for different markets (drawing on evidence from China and South Africa). It then reviews case study evidence from three contrasting consumption cultures: consumption and 'public culture' in India, 'consumer nationalism' in China, and 'artful consumption' in Russia. The paper concludes by identifying some current debates and outlining some directions for future research, including a re-emphasis on consumption and material culture; an exploration of consumption as social practice; the delineation of commodityspecific consumption cultures; and some reflections on the political, ethical and methodological issues that are being raised in contemporary consumption research. key words cultures of consumption globalization China India Russia

This paper uses the concept of 'moral economy' to challenge the conventional view that defines morality and the market as oppositional terms. Drawing on evidence from life history interviews with key actors in the British food industry, the paper outlines how moral and ethical questions are articulated through notions of space and time. Using case study material from the chicken and sugar industries, the paper examines the way that ethical and moral issues are expressed through the dimensions of time (via notions of remembering and forgetting) and space (via notions of connecting and disconnecting) and via notions of visibility and invisibility. The paper concludes by examining how our understanding of the moral economies of food can be advanced through the adoption of a relational view of geographical scale and temporal connection, contrasting the attribution of individual blame with a politics of collective responsibility.key words moral economy food and farming space and time chicken sugar Britain