Description |
-
Current sociological research on farmers' markets has focused primarily on why customers choose to shop at farmers' markets. This thesis takes a broader view, exploring farmers' markets as multi-dimensional social spaces shaped not only by food procurement needs, but by elaborate social and political meanings attached to food and to consumption itself. Using ethnographic fieldwork and 22 in-depth ... read moreinterviews with consumers and vendors, this research shows how these meanings are constructed and resisted collaboratively by shoppers and vendors, and the powerful ways in which they are informed by leading voices in the New Food Movement. In particular, I show that shoppers consume ideals promoted by the New Food movement, despite their perceptions of themselves as unaffiliated - and in some cases opposed - to the movement itself. Although farmers benefit from the wholesome halo afforded them by the New Food Movement, in the end, bucolic valorization comes with considerable costs in the form of unrealistic consumer expectations and pressure to somehow be above the realities of profit-based necessities.read less
|
This object is in collection