Mundane normativity and the everyday handling of contested food consumption
Professor Bente Halkier has contributed the article 'Mundane normativity and the everyday handling of contested food consumption' to the journal Consumption and Society.
Much contemporary public debate focuses on food consumption. Yet existing research has focused largely either on political and ethical consumption, or on tacitly reproduced routines in consumption. In contrast, the mundane processes in which explicit and implicit ways of handling normative issues are entangled have received little attention, either empirically or theoretically.
In her article, Halkier seeks to consider these issues in detail, suggesting a new framework for empirical investigations of processes of reproduction and change in consumption patterns.
Halkier introduces two new terms in mundane normativity – expectable and acceptable consumption – and uses examples, including material from four different Danish research studies, to show how these terms can help better understand mundane normativity from a practice theoretical perspective.
The article suggests that the terms expectable and acceptable consumption can enable consumption researchers to examine more variety in relation to the normative in consumption and investigate the intertwined processes of reproduction and change in consumption better. Furthermore, the article argues that analysing mundane normativity points towards an issue in consumption that practice theoretical research has not yet addressed sufficiently – social hierarchies.
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The article is published in volume 1, issue 1 of Consumption and Society: Mundane normativity and the everyday handling of contested food consumption
Consumption and Society is a new Bristol University Press journal, that publishes peer-reviewed articles, and advance theoretical and empirical understanding of consumption as a societal phenomenon.