Ethical Foodscapes?: Premises, Promises, and Possibilities

Abstract

Ethical foodscapes?: premises, promises, and possibilities That food is good to`think' as much as eat, is most certainly true. Yet, it is even more true that`good' food is even better to both think and feel with (and sometimes eat) at the moment, particularly in an era of food scares, continuing poverty, a supposed obesity crisis', debates concerning food (in)security and food sovereignty, and environmental degradation. In short, the good food`revolution'öfrom foods defined variously as healthy, low-carbon, fairly traded, local, organic, free-range, cruelty-free, natural and/or slowöhas no doubt come to a supermarket shelf, farm shop, TV set, book store, magazine rack, or even a kitchen table near you. In this, especially given the rise of celebrity chefs and their desire to help us cook everything from haute cuisine to something simply quick and tasty, good food has also become good to watch, read about, and sometimes even perform in one's own kitchen. Watching what we eat (Collins, 2009) is no longer simply about dieting, but is a full-time spectator sport that is as much about`eater-tainment' and increasing the fortunes of branded celebrity chefs as it is about cooking a meal and bringing good food to the masses.But then again,`bad ' food is also good to think about and watch. Indeed, bad food has spawned a growing media industry that is much beyond the relatively tame investigative journalist-type expose¨s of the industrial food systems which make up part of Freidberg's (2004)`ethical complex of food'. Here, the success of`non-eatertainment'öin the form of movies such as

What does it mean to do food justice?

“…Instead, AFNs have often sought to 'bring good food to others' as a mode of redemptive action rather than to seek local and global justice by analyzing and acting upon structural inequalities. Thus, the food movement has tended to project idyllic social relations and contributed to problematic patterns of exploitation, domination, and dependency ( Alkon and Agyeman 2011b;Allen 2008;Allen 2010;Allen et al 2003;Allen and Guthman 2006;Allen and Wilson 2008;Anderson 1999;DuPuis, Goodman, and Harrison 2006;Freidburg 2003;Goodman 2003;Guthman 2003Guthman , 2004Guthman , 2008aGuthman , 2008bGuthman , 2008cGoodman and Goodman 2007;Goodman, Maye, and Holloway 2010;Hinrichs 2010;Hinrichs and Kremer 2002;Howard and Jaffee 2013;Jaffee and Howard 2010;Mooney 1988;Mooney and Majka 1995;Mutersbaugh 2005;Slocum 2006Slocum , 2007. Time and again we find the same gaps between ideal and practice in efforts to change the food system.…”

Transforming governance in telecoupled food systems

“…Over the last decades, rural sociologists, geographers, and anthropologists have brought attention to the complexity of contemporary food system interactions, arguing that the reorganization of global capital and investment has fundamentally restructured our relationship with food, its place of origin, and its social and environmental impacts (Goodman and Watts 1997, Clapp 2003, McMichael 2011. Scholars of food regime theory have argued that we are now in a new era, a new food regime, in which corporate interests and financial controls are dominant (see Friedmann 1994, McMichael 2001, but one in which there are also new dynamics offering both resistance to corporate food-system control and new economic opportunities for powerful actors to exert their agendas (McMichael 2009, Goodman et al 2010).…”

“…Scholars of food regime theory have argued that we are now in a new era, a new food regime, in which corporate interests and financial controls are dominant (see Friedmann 1994, McMichael 2001, but one in which there are also new dynamics offering both resistance to corporate food-system control and new economic opportunities for powerful actors to exert their agendas (McMichael 2009, Goodman et al 2010). This new food regime, named "food from somewhere" by Campbell (2009), is an evolution from the prior global food regime dominated by generic, substitutable commodity chains and the "invisibility of origin" of food, i.e., "food from nowhere."…”

“…Food systems are inherently global, connected by complex webs of information, goods, services, and capital (Goodman and Watts 1997). Today more than ever before, local food systems operate within a regime in which corporate actors play a significant role (UNCTAD 2009, McMichael 2011, and distal consumers' preferences and decisions over market dynamics have large local impacts affecting local ecosystems and livelihoods (Lambin and Meyfroidt 2011).…”

Organic intimacy: emotional practices at an organic store

“…On the contrary, to be able to act on their values, informed consumers must devote time, energy and money to the cause (Goodman et al 2010;Johnston et al 2009;Pétursson 2013;Roos et al 2007). In providing transparency, food producers, companies and retail stores have increasingly turned to storytelling in the hope of regaining the trust and loyalty of consumers (Bryant and Goodman 2004;Fog et al 2010;Larsen and Österlund-Pötzsch 2015;Pétursson 2013).…”