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In-Depth Information
blanket claim of a shift in power from food producers to food retailers may be
appealing, it actually misses a range of diverse power gains (and shifts) within (the)
agri-food' sphere. Indeed, as Aksoy and Beghin (2005) show for agricultural trade
patterns, contradictory international trade patterns are emerging, at the country and
commodity levels. In their review of UK consumer attitudes, Bowyer and Lang
(2006) identify several especially salient points: different government agencies are
content to be boxed in by their remits, consumers want both value-for-money and
values-for-money (Lang, 2007), attitudes may not equate to actions, government
responsibility for meeting consumer attitudes is split and a long-term view needs to
be taken on consumer attitudes.
If we accept the view that 'everything to do with food has experienced an unprec-
edented period of fl ux: on the farm, in the factory, on retail shelves, in transit, in
marketing and the home' (Millstone and Lang, 2002, p. 7), then we need more than
political economy insights. The agri-food chain and food regimes approaches with
their focus on structural and contextual processes and actors, investment patterns
and pressures and behaviours of actors, must be supplemented with a discussion of
meanings, moral and cultural politics of food.
The Cultural and Moral Economy of Food
At the heart of any cultural and moral economy of food are two components: the
complexity of valuation processes and the power that different actors derive from,
and exercise around, valuations by virtue of their positions in these processes. Inter-
estingly, cultural and moral economy thinkers arrive at similar conclusions to those
taking the food regime and agri-food commodity chain paths.
But where do food values come from and how are they 'fi xed' (however fl eet-
ingly)? By way of illustration, Dixon (2002, p. 157) contends that the 'chicken
delivers a melange of values with less effort than other meats'. These values have
not been static; moving from the chicken for festive occasions in the 1960s, to an
emphasis on freshness in the 1970s, nutritional content in relation to red meat in
the 1980s, and the ultimate convenience food in the 1990s. Much of the struggle
over the valuing of chicken has been around infl uencing the practices at a number
of key sites - household kitchens, the community-like kitchens of fast-food outlets
and industrial kitchens supplying supermarkets and institutions such as hospitals
(see also Watts [2005] for a provocative discussion of the chicken commodity in
political and moral economy terms).
Using Appadurai's (1986, p. 57) concept of a 'regime of value', namely a broad
set of agreements over what is desirable, what a reasonable 'exchange of sacrifi ces'
entails and who is permitted to exercise what kind of effective demand in what cir-
cumstances. Dixon (2002; 2007) outlines the substitution nature of the chicken and
food retailing industries more generally, where words are exchanged rather than
goods, the primary role of professionals, increasingly in supermarkets, being to
mobilise reputations and bias in order to shape regimes of value. Jackson et al.
(2007, p. 329) express similar sentiments. They argue that chicken is 'emblematic
of a wider process occurring within the food industry whereby mainstream retailers
such as Marks and Spencer are appropriating the language that was formerly associ-
ated with “alternative” producers'. Friedmann (2005, p. 229) is less charitable,
suggesting that the supermarkets seek to 'share perceptual frames, choosing demands
that best fi t with expanding market opportunities and profi ts'. Commodity status
