Watson, M. and Meah, A. (2013) Food and waste: negotiating conflicting social anxieties into the practices of provisioning. The Sociological Review, 60 (S2). 102 - 120. ISSN 0038-0261
Abstract
Two significant realms of social anxiety, visible in the discourses of media and public policy, potentially pull practices of home food provisioning in conflicting directions. On the one hand, campaigns to reduce the astonishing levels of food waste generated in the UK moralize acts of both food saving (such as keeping and finding creative culinary uses for leftovers) and food disposal. On the other hand, agencies concerned with food safety, including food-poisoning, problematize common practices of thrift, saving and reuse around provisioning. The tensions that arise as these public discourses are negotiated together into domestic practices open up moments in which ‘stuff’ crosses the line from being food to being waste. This paper pursues this through the lens of qualitative and ethnographic data collected as part of a four-year European research programme concerned with consumer anxieties about food. Through focus groups, life-history interviews and observations, data emerged which give critical insights into processes from which food waste results. With a particular focus on how research participants negotiate use-by dates, we argue that interventions to reduce food waste can be enhanced by appreciating how food becomes waste through everyday practices.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Editors: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2013 The Authors. Editorial organisation © 2013 The Editorial Board of the Sociological Review. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in The Sociological Review. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | food waste; food safety; anxiety; social practice |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Geography (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 30 Oct 2015 10:26 |
Last Modified: | 20 Apr 2016 06:18 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-954X.12040 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/1467-954X.12040 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:90976 |