Concern about eating biotechnologically produced foodstuffs is embedded within the complex relationship between food, science, politics, and everyday eating practices. In this paper I consider how this concern is expressed less at the reflexive level of opinions and attitudes and more at the nonreflexive level of eating practices. Therefore, I draw upon literatures that talk of a practical everyday aesthetic and literatures that assert the significance of the material to geographical work, and go on to argue for the significance of a material connective aesthetic within eating practices. This argument is developed empirically and theoretically by considering to what extent consumers can discuss the edibility of different types of carrots in terms of superficial material qualities, integral material qualities, and the immaterial. Crucially, the process of edibility formation is thus understood as relationally embedded in the material environment. This provokes a realisation for an ethics and a politics of (im)material connectivities. This work contributes to geographical work in which an embodied affective ethic is employed, by arguing that the transversal qualities of the material are as significant as the transversal qualities of ‘affect’. It is relevant to those studying consumption, biogeographies, and nonreflexive practices.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BarnettCClokePClarkeNMalpassA, 2005, “Consuming ethics: Articulating the subjects and spaces of ethical consumption”Antipode3723–45
2.
BeckU, 1992Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (Sage, London)
3.
BridgeGMcManusPMarsdenT, 2003, “The next new thing? Biotechnology and its discontents”Geoforum34165–174
4.
CarsonR, 1962Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA)
5.
ConnollyW, 1999, “Brain waves, transcendental fields, and techniques of thought”Radical Philosophy9419–28
GiardL, 1998, “Doing-cooking”, in The Practices of Everyday Life. Volume 2: Living and Cooking Eds de CerteauMGiardLMayolP, translated by TomasikT J, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN) pp 149–247
14.
GM Nation, 2003GM Nation: The Findings of the Public DebateThe Stationery Office, London
GoodmanD, 1999, “Agro-food studies in the ‘Age of ecology’: Nature, corporeality, bio-politics’Sociologia Ruralis3917–38
17.
GoodmanD, 2001, “Ontology matters: The relational materiality of nature and agro-food studies”Sociologia Ruralis41182–200
18.
HarrisonP, 2000, “Making sense: Embodiment and the sensibilities of the everyday”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space18497–517
19.
HighmoreB, 2004, “Homework. Routine, social aesthetics and the ambiguity of everyday life”Cultural Studies18306–327
20.
HinchliffeSKearnesMBDegenMWhatmoreS, 2005, “Urban wild things: A cosmopolitical experiment”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space23643–658
21.
JacksonP, 2000, “Rematerialising social and cultural geography”Social and Cultural Geography19–14
22.
KearnesM, 2003, “Geographies that matter—the rhetorical deployment of physicality?”Social and Cultural Geography3139–152
23.
LathamAMcCormackD, 2004, “Moving cities: Rethinking the materialities of urban geographies”Progress in Human Geography28701–724
24.
LatourB, 2004The Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA)
25.
LawJMolA, 1995, “Notes on materiality and sociality”Sociological Review43274–294
26.
LawrenceF, 2004Not on the Label: What Really Goes into the Food on Your Plate (Penguin Books, London)
27.
LockieSKittoS, 2000, “Beyond the farm gate: Production–consumption networks and agri-food research”Socioligia Ruralis423–19
28.
McCormackD, 2003, “An event of geographical ethics in spaces of affect”Transactions of the Institute of British Geography, New Series28488–507
29.
MacMillanT, 2003, “Tales of biotechnology regulation: The EU ban on BST”Geoforum34187–201
30.
MacnaghtenP, 2001Animal Futures. Public Attitudes and Sensibilities towards Animals and Biotechnology in Contemporary Britain report by the Institute for Environment, Philosophy and Public Policy, Lancaster University, Lancaster; for the Agricultural and Environmental Biotechnology Commission
31.
MansfieldB, 2003, “From catfish to organic fish: Making distinctions about nature as cultural economic practice”Geoforum34329–342
32.
MieleMMurdochJ, 2002, “The practical aesthetics of traditional cuisines: Slow food in Tuscany”Sociologia Ruralis42412–418
MurdochJMieleM, 2004, “A new aesthetic of food? Relational reflexivity in the ‘alternative’ food movement”, in Eds HarveyMMcMeekinAWardeAQualities of Food (Manchester University Press, Manchester) pp 156–175
PatersonM, 2006, “Feel the presence: Technologies of touch and distance”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space24 forthcoming
37.
RoeE, 2005, “Becoming post-phenomenal: Intangible pathways of things through the body”Social and cultural Geography forthcoming
38.
SpencerTWhatmoreS, 2001, “Bio-geographies: Putting some life back into the discipline”, editorialTransactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series26139–141
39.
StassartPWhatmoreS, 2003, “Metabolising risk: Food scares and the un/re-making of Belgian beef”Environment and Planning A35449–462
40.
TeilGHennionA, 2004, “Discovering quality or performing taste? A sociology of the amateur”, Eds HarveyMMcMeekinAWardeAQualities of Food (Manchester University Press, Manchester) pp 19–37
41.
TullochJLuptonD, 2002, “Consuming risk, consuming science. The case of GM foods”Journal of Consumer Culture2363–383
42.
ValentineG, 2002, “Incorporations: Food, bodies and organisations”Body and Society81–20
43.
WhatmoreS, 1997, “Dissecting the autonomous self: Hybrid cartographies for a relational ethics”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space1537–53
44.
WhatmoreS, 2002Hybrid Geographies (Sage, London)
45.
WhatmoreSThorneL, 1998, “Wild(er)ness: Reconfiguring geographies of wildlife”Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series24435–454
