Afters/ Where should we go?

This blogs agenda is about the many facets within foods production and movement to consumption in the broader sense, but consumption is not straightforward either. There is no linear chain to describe our blogs movement; here, the commodity chain as a metaphor (Whatmore and Thorne 1997; Leslie and Reimer 1999), is not sufficient. “Aftering” is also about following place and the implications of place in the “consumers’ world” (Sack 1993) since, above all, place continues to inform our own particular geographies. In the global sense, there is only one world, leading us to consider the unsettling prospect that by constructing our own consumer world, we invariably contribute to the construction of others as well. Place and consumption are a moral project (Sack 1997), thus we are implicated, requiring that we take responsibility for our actions as they extend through geography. Broadly speaking, the purpose of this blog is to establish a framework leading to the understanding of how what people eat can also dictate what others must consume. In the end, challenging our consumption of foods into different categories such as desire (as in the fetish) versus need (Benson 2007) forces us to re-examine the idea of food itself. Maye echoes these thoughts (see blog) through the comment “what is the job of a critical food geographer?” Harvey’s central concern is about commodities and their “fingerprints of exploitation,” about where they are from and the abuse that geographic ignorance induces. How we are implicated (responsible) in the consumption imposed by us on others is as important as the extent to which it is hidden. We ask; “Do we have much to do with the process, even if unknowingly?” is it all just reflexive consumption- responding to that defetishising stimulus that Guthman questions? Disparities between the rich and poor emerge in the different geographies visible through food. But geography does not allow for ambiguous agency. Specific markets, specific commodities and specific processes of commodification mediate our own particular social and economic life much differently then those of ‘others.’

As a sense of locality, place is illuminated by the commodities moving through these places. Their movement becomes a means of identification. Appadurai (1986, 4) writes that there are other reasons for the circulation of commodities than the mere exchange of values; “desire and demand, reciprocal sacrifice and power interact to create economic value in specific social situations.” My interests in the linkages between consumers, their objects, and how they negotiate the various identities therein makes me realize I do not understand connections very well at all.

Recognizing the impacts of consumption forces us to acknowledge how economies filter our lives, give ‘life’ to commodities (Harvey 1990) and embed (Winter 2003) them with meanings. Fetishism, however, does more than replace social relations with object relations. Looking back along the delivery network to see from where the object has come, seeing the fingerprints of exploitation during production, is not enough. Harvey would argue that, we, by merely buying the food, are directly responsible for the lives of everyone in that chain, and willingly or not, the act of consumption signs us up to this reality, and we choose to take this knowledge into our world or choose to ignore it.

E. Melanie DePuis defines it thusly:

“A reflexive consumer is therefore not a social activist, nor is he or she necessarily committed to a particular political point of view, as espoused by other actors in the public sphere…. However, the reflexive consumer listens to and evaluates claims made by groups organized around a particular food issue…and evaluates his or her own activities based on what he or she feels is the legitimacy of these claims” (2002, 228).

In this way, reflexive consumerism makes a mockery of claims to understand those who bring food into our world since we can pick and choose how we consume, while those who produce and those who consume our scraps may not have that option.

The interrelatedness of place requires differing shades of interaction and agency. Because we stand in front of a produce section and next to someone whose “life world” requires that they eat what we throw away does not mean always that our consumption predicates his; the geographies of commoditization are subtler than that because, on the face of it, there is no causal relationship that had to happen.

In place, everything is local, even when acted upon a global scale, but we only recognize immediate effects upon people around us. Understanding the consequences of our actions as “geographic leviathans” (Sack 1997) requires that we connect the inequalities of society into our own lives beyond merely “thinking global, acting local.” Our place making mediates our ability to effectively see the consequences of our actions. Our place creates other places. Eating food creates collections of places each constructed for that project and connected by that food’s mobility. Some have the power to buy food and thus make places to that end, but places are interconnected and the power that creates places for consumption also makes places to deal with the waste created.

These revelations suggest that connectivity through material culture supersedes heritage and a food’s history. “It’s what we eat because we’ve always eaten it” no longer offers adequate solace as we confront the entangled politics of consumption. A particular commodity system is composed of relationships where some nodes have more power than others based on the relations they are each able to produce and maintain, while others are of a more reflexive nature. Each link, whether voluntary or not, reacts to the others as information is passed and received across the network while simultaneously reproducing relations locally on the landscape. Each agent is invested in the immediacy of their actions at the same time across all scales, regardless of their awareness. Human/object boundaries are questioned as the food enters the commodity system and physically moves from its origin to the places of its consumption. As it traverses arbitrary local/global distinctions and engages with human agents, the commodity system is produced and perpetuated, but the system itself is also dependant on place, and therefore, the meanings and value of a commodity are negotiated in place. Consumers, through and during negotiation decide price and by extension determine the composition of value and price differential for themselves as a representation of that value. Negotiation is inscribed by (and in) place, giving place agency in how price represents value. Some consumers then decide whether or not it comprises the social (ecological) relations hidden by the fetish while others simply buy dinner.

The point is, in places of consumption, we negotiate all facets of a commodity’s identity, whether or not we realize the full extent of what that means (realization of fetish—or into double fetish). What lies outside our negotiation are the side lives, or the forward life, of things. The markets where foods circulate are fraught with different uses and ideas about the culinary value of those foods. The markets themselves are a place and thus embedded within their own locally existing definitions. Commodity exchange is a valuable tool in the ongoing search for understandings of a globalizing world. Nature has been co-opted to produce foods in all seasons, the wastes of those foods becomes food for others when what is desired leaves nature behind or becomes segmented into different understandings of what nature is. By-products of consumption become products of consumption themselves, particularly in a recycling world. Geographers are presented with many opportunities for further research because of this.

Lucius Hallett IV, Western Michigan University

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DEPUIS, E. M. (2002) Nature’s Perfect Food: How Milk Became America’s Drink. New York, New York University Press.
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______. (1997) Homo Geographicus: a framework for action, awareness, and moral concern. Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press.
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