The Politics of Grocery Shopping - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 643

your dollar” to support initiatives that are green, clean, and socially just. The motiva-
tions are political, but the benefits are also framed as personal. For example, the cover
of Mark Bittman's book Food Matters depicts a hybrid apple-globe graphic, with a label
that reads, “Lose Weight, Heal the Planet.”
As a strategy for transforming the global food system, consumer food politics1 (here-
after referred to as “food politics”) is promisingly popular, but far from straightforward.
This chapter seeks to bring greater clarity to this topic by describing and assessing key
debates about consumption and food system reform. The question of exactly how to
empirically define when food choices become politicized is widely explored in the lit-
erature. Scholars suggest that politicized forms of food consumption involve the regular
purchase of foods and/or modification of the diet with the deliberate purpose of contrib-
uting to the collective good (e.g., by improving environmental quality, contributing to
social justice, or supporting local business; see Halkier 2008; Stolle and Hooghe 2004).
Whether consumption can be considered a form of political action with transformative
potential is up for debate (Johnston 2008; Gabriel and Lang 2006; Micheletti 2003). In
this chapter, we aim to advance the debate concerning the transformative potential of
food politics by drawing attention to the varied meanings given to consumption and
consumerism by shoppers, and by providing a conceptual map, or typology, of these
meanings. This typology helps move the debate beyond a simple dichotomy of the apo-
litical versus the political consumer. We document a range of political perspectives rep-
resenting different ideas of how consumption may be harnessed to generate structural
change in the food system. We see the greatest potential in citizenship perspectives that
resist the commodification of food and food solutions, and we see politicized eating as
only one way of addressing the inequalities and ecological degradation embedded in
affluent North American diets. While market-based consumption strategies have some
positive elements, including their popular appeal, we think it is important to challenge
the idea that individual shopping strategies are a sufficient way to reform a highly ineq-
uitable food system dominated by corporate interests.
Taking different debates and critiques of food politics2 into account, this chapter
sets out three main goals: (1) provide a brief overview of the history and characteris-
tics of consumer food politics, outlining key tensions between new consumer tastes,
and market incorporation of consumer politics; (2) introduce a typology of consumer
food politics to examine the varied meanings that consumers attach to food politics; and
(3) discuss the strengths and limits of consumer-driven regulation of the food system.
A New Taste for Politics? A Brief
Overview of Food Politics
The state is heavily involved in shaping the food system through various measures,
such as subsidies to agricultural and corporate producers, the operation of regulatory