Michael Pollack wrote:
>So what's the objection? That our class position, determined by our place
>in the production and distribution process, places real bounds on our
>consumption choices? No argument from me there -- or from anyone else, I
>don't think.
I think the idea that our class location (place in the production and distribution process if you like) is tending to less and less place bounds on our consumption choices, real or otherwise. And in the US these types of distinction were always less important (having to do with our lack or diminished aristocratic heritage among other reasons).
>But I don't see how that invalidates the sifting of
>consumption activities for meaning. Or gainsays that they are signs of
>collective identities. Or that individual identities are at least partly
>expressed through the way we each mix and match among them. And perhaps
>especially in the ways we on the individual level harmonize tastes that on
>the collective level are perceived as being in opposition. Or vv.
Doesn't the second part of this invalidate the first?
Brad
PS Wouldn't the fact that some here probably know alot about food consumption but were under the false assumption that most US farms were capitalist (wage labour dependent) actually make my point of the dubious nature of the shifting focus from production to consumption of food? Isn't the whole 'food movement', for all of its shortcomings and problems, about attempting to reconnect people with the source, that is the production and distribution, of their food? Why are people hostile to this?
-- Brad A. Bauerly PhD Candidate Political Science York University Toronto, Canada 647-345-2072 bauerly at yorku.ca