Many consumers consider local food a more sustainable choice than conventional food because of the shorter transport distances involved as well as the support provided to local economies. In addition, consumers value the perceived safety benefits, ethical associations and improved taste of local food. In this study, we focus on the cultural meanings of locally produced food among Finnish consumers. Based on interviews with 22 consumers, our analysis suggests that, besides consumers valuing sustainable, healthy and tasty locally produced food, they perceived self-produced, self-processed items, including those they have gathered, hunted and fished themselves, as the most authentic local food. Furthermore, local food is associated with craftsmanship and artisan production. We also found that interviewees tended to historicize their relationship to food through local production. Thus, consumers seem to be in search of 'real' or 'true' food that is embedded in their personal and shared social histories.
In this paper we elaborate how the framing of lifestyle-based collaborative consumption impacts local mobilisation. We present time banking as a collaborative consumption lifestyle emerging from literatures on collaborative consumption and lifestyle movements. The cultural processes of meaning making and practices of framing, through which time banks mobilise constituents and entice collective action, are examined through naturally occurring text interpreted for diagnostic, prognostic and motivational framing. These three framing tasks further illuminate the change aimed for in local lifestyles. The data were collected from time banks in three European metropolitan areas. The findings highlight framing as a practice that challenges traditional monetised ideology of exchange in orthodox economic theory and the hegemonic understandings of consumption. This paper advances the recent discussions on lifestyle movements engaging in meaning creation practices impacting the everyday actions of consumers in local communities.
The aim of this article was to analyse an attempt to promote sustainable consumption by shaping the conditions for consumption. In particular, the focus lies on sustainable public catering as an approach to shaping both the supply of and demand for sustainable meals. In order to capture the processes of governing consumption, the way is traced in which rationalities (ways of thinking and calculating), technologies (means and instruments), visibilities (concrete manifestations), and identities (types of agents assumed) related to a policy intervention for sustainable public catering are interpreted and recreated by three main groups of actors involved: policy makers, catering professionals, and consumers. This analysis highlights the active role of practitioners in realizing policies for sustainable consumption. It has implications for policy makers and analysts: Reflexive policies should heed to actors' unfolding interpretations as they can take the policy process in different directions.During the past decades, sustainable development has emerged as an issue on the political agenda, and consumption patterns have gained prominence in the discussion on sustainable development. As early as in 1987, the report Our common future defined sustainable development as "development that meets the needs of the present without comprising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (World Commission on Environment J Consum Policy (2012) 35:7-21
In this editorial, we contemplate how the politics of the everyday in consumption and consumer lifestyles emerge. Foundational here is the overarching question why, how and where do people come to share common spaces, meaning, identity, practice and goals in dispersed lifestyles aiming for (social) change. This special issue is an original endeavour to generate an understanding of the issues, problems and potential for change emerging from individual and collective efforts in and around consumption and lifestyles. The editorial presents principles and commonalities of the intersectional study of consumption, lifestyle and social movements. We connect these principles with the papers that make up the special issue and conclude with an outlook for future research.
In recent debates on sustainable consumption, consumer's responsibility for the outcome of consumption has been outlined. Even though (co‐)responsibilities have to be acknowledged, a general notion of responsibility is not unproblematic. Consequently, this article challenges conceptions of the responsible and thoughtful consumer. In providing a perspective on theorizing domestic consumption as social practice, the analysis of diary data encompassing a period of 20 years elucidates on the contours of routinized practices. The empirical material consists of diaries kept by a housewife during the years 1970–1990 in a mid‐sized German town. In analysing the data, distinct features such as seasonality and constancy of routines in domestic practices become apparent. In this study, it is possible to stress the longevity of the repetitive and routine character of domestic practices and provide a perspective on often unrecognized and unaware aspects in routines. Assuming that routine consumption processes are taking place as moments in domestic practices, the data analysed here illustrate interesting directions for more sustainable consumption and further developments in home economics and consumer studies.
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