Citizen-consumer revisited: The cultural meanings of organic food consumption in Israel

Organic retail-chain consumers

For the past decade, a few retail chains have branded themselves as significantly distinct from conventional retail chains. These are supermarkets that wear images conveying naturalness, health, ecology, and being “organic.” The most prominent is the chain Eden Teva Market. The name literally means “heavenly natural market.” It is designed according to the model of the American supermarket chain Whole Foods Market. The first store of the chain was actually the first store in Israel calling itself an “organic supermarket.”

“Eden,” as the chain is called for short by the consumers, clearly symbolizes the process of conventionalization of organic food in Israel. This is expressed, for example, in the chain’s advertising slogan that declares, “In Eden Teva Market you will find a huge selection which ensures that everyone can find the exact products that suit them. Just like any other supermarket … only healthier!”. The chain’s advertising campaign includes a series of aesthetic and textual expressions, seeking to identify the chain with “variety, quality and health.” This marketing strategy – which was borrowed directly from Whole Food Market – is an on-the-mark description of how Eden Teva Market is perceived by its consumers. This range of images works to dissociate the organic food from the asceticism and tastelessness that it connoted for many years, before the appearance of the chain. Therefore, when buying organic food at Eden, consumers can capitalize on this practice to gain cultural capital and to manifest their prestigious habitus, which consists of conspicuous affluence, freedom of choice, special taste, and self-care. Thus, for example, Noa, a 41-year-old woman, testifies,

Since Eden opened, I became an enthusiastic consumer of organic supermarkets. I was fed up with depressing health stores, and I do not get along with the vegetable box scheme […] I invest a lot of time and money in cooking, it’s my hobby. I host a lot and plan in advance what to cook […]. I want to be able to pick and choose the best product. Variety, that’s the big benefit of Eden!

Indeed, the stores of the chain have a huge selection of food products – organic and non-organic. A tour in Eden conveys the sense of a visit to a “global cultural supermarket” (Mathews, 2000: 18), with its dozens of legumes, spices, and dried fruits imported from around the globe; food products from the Far East; and items from many more countries. Similar to the way in which the American organic supermarket chains operate (Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods Market, and the like) – so the proposed consumption experience in Eden is based on the principle of “seductiveness of variety” (Bauman, 2011: 1–17) and on a conspicuous exhibit of “plenty” – which expresses luxury and wealth (Campbell, 1987; Veblen, 1994).

All consumers interviewed – who visit Eden Teva Market regularly – referred to the wide range of products and to their quality. Some indicated familiarity with American supermarket chains, which this chain wishes to resemble. Some of the consumers who were interviewed described their experience in Eden as an experience of “a short trip abroad.”

Many consumers credit the chain with adopting administration and marketing methods similar to American discount stores (which are widespread in the conventional retail food sector in Israel). Eden has indeed applied “conventional” marketing methods to the organic sector, such as demonstrating low prices (due to the advantage of the chain’s purchasing power in bargaining with suppliers), launching private brands of organic food products, creating “sale” events, a customer club, special discounts, and so on. This facet of the chain brought about its integration into shopping centers, which are central recreational places for the middle class in Israel (Ram, 2008). The chain’s name (Eden Teva Market) – which is a cross between the English and Hebrew languages (teva means nature in Hebrew) – is in line with the names of global and Israeli major retail chains located nearby in shopping centers that have non-Hebrew or Hebrew–English hybrid names (McDonald’s, Home Center, Shufersal Deal (the largest conventional supermarket chain in Israel) and others).

Some consumers maintained that the emergence of the chain and its operation in the retail food sector in Israel is a matter of utmost importance. The importance stems, so they maintained, not necessarily due to the fact that the chain promotes environmental or social values, but rather due to the fact that the chain contributes to the spread of the “free market” neoliberal model in the field of Israeli organic food (I refer to neoliberalism as a political-economy project that advances an institutional framework characterized by free markets and free trade (Harvey, 2005: 2)). The words of Baruch, a 50-year-old engineer whom I met on one of my visits to an Eden store, represent a clear neoliberal perspective, which is quite common in Eden’s consumers’ discourse:

I have no doubt that Eden Teva Market did a good thing […]. Fifteen or twenty years ago, we bought two tomatoes a cucumber and an apple and payed 200 NIS. Today I sometimes find organic [food] cheaper than non-organic– so what’s wrong with that? It’s the same also in America. We lived [pointing to his wife] for a while in Palo Alto. There you can get organic [food] at reasonable prices. Now it is also happening in Israel. The competition [between Eden Teva Market and other organic supermarket chains] lowered the prices.

Baruch sees the way Eden Teva Market operates as an expression of the “American way” that is promoting pleasurable experience and cheaper organic food. Furthermore, there are some that consider consumption from Eden Teva Market a practice that actually contributes to society and the environment. For example, according to Yoav, a 38-year-old male from Tel Aviv,

I don’t shop here every week, it’s a bit expensive. But listen – there is awareness and care [in the way the chain operates]. So even if I spend a little more [money], at least I’m doing something for the environment.

Yoav’s words illustrate the assimilation of environmental messages and images seen in Eden Teva Market, which are expressed in the multiplicity of green colors, in the fabric bags in which the products are packed, the recycled paper packing for baked goods, and the verbal and visual signs that appear on the walls of the supermarket which refer to “nature,” “environment,” and “earth.” Yoav’s words coincide with the main message exhibited by the organic supermarket chains in Israel and in the Western world: “shopping for change” and “environmental conservation through consumption” (Johnston, 2008; Johnston and Szabo, 2011).

However, I found almost a total lack of consideration for the negative consequences of the chain’s operation. Only few consumers protested about issues such as the closing of small organic stores unable to compete with big supermarket chains, the increase in air pollution and carbon footprint due to the use of private vehicles (since most of the chain’s stores are located in remote commercial areas and in suburbs), and the deepening inequality and inequitable access to healthy food products due to cultural capital and economic capital required to consume from the chain.

Thus, the translation of the term “organic” by the consumers of Eden is revealed as composed of predominantly consumerist patterns and access to global material and cultural goods. In the course of symbolic consumption of “organic,” they in fact celebrate the expansion of their access to global taste cultures. The health representations connected to the “organic” concept express individual meanings, healthy lifestyle, fashionable, Western/American, and up-to-date style. The ethical in the organic is subordinated to the neoliberal paradigm, which individualizes the care and responsibility for the environment. Therefore, the hybridization of “citizenship” and “consumerism” in the case of Eden Teva Market is revealed as composed of global-American consumerism and of civic-ethical attitudes limited to an individual-neoliberal logic.

Consumers of CSAs

CSA is a model for growing, marketing, and consuming agricultural produce that first appeared in the second half of the last century in Switzerland, Germany, and Japan. According to this model, a group of consumers join a farmer and commit to regularly purchasing his crops. The farmer, in turn, ensures quality, reliability, and locality. Ideally, the relationship between growers and consumers (also called “community members”) is based on partnership and mutual support between growers and consumers (Cone and Myhre, 2000). The CSA model is acknowledged as “alternative,” “ecological,” and “communal,” and its consumers are perceived as typical “citizen-consumers” (Barnett et al., 2005; Johnston, 2008).

In Israel, there are currently 20–30 farms operating in the CSA model. All of them grow organic produce. Each one of these farms provides weekly boxes with organic fruits, vegetables, and other organic food products to between tens and hundreds of households.

Many of the Israeli consumers of these initiatives know the meaning of the term “community-supported agriculture,” but do not identify themselves as “community members” or “agricultural supporters.” For them, this is one option chosen over others for organic produce consumption. “We’re just getting an organic box directly from the farmer to our home,” some of them claim. This lack of essential communal feeling may be derived from the way CSAs in Israel operate. According to the Israeli model, customers are actually subscribers who receive a weekly organic vegetable box and pay a monthly fee for the vegetables they consume. They do not contribute to the establishment of the farm, do not share in its management, and few of them take an active part in the growing process. Furthermore, in most of Israeli CSAs, the relationship between growers and customers is carried out just by an active web site and a weekly newsletter put out by the growers. Thus, it seems that a sense of community is created not through a physical meeting, but through a virtual meeting and the exchange of textual information. Global networking technology, virtual in character, is what re-establishes, in practice, the sense of partnership between growers and consumers.

Israeli CSA consumers are not referred to as “subscribers” or “members” by the growers, but rather as “families.” Most of them are middle class, professionals, residents of major cities, suburbs, and settlements of the wealthiest municipalities in Israel, and indeed, the majority of them are families. Several scholars have already pointed out the role of “eating in” as structuring the social categories of family and home (DeVault, 1991: 79; Lupton, 1996: 39). In Israel – as well as other capitalist societies – the “family meal” is increasingly abandoned, due to the individualization of the eating experience and the growing Western practice of “eating out” (Ashley et al., 2004: 134). This process led to a decrease in parental control, a sense of insecurity, and lack of knowledge about the quality of the food that children eat. These feelings are in keeping with the sociologist Ulrich Beck’s (1992) description of the current social state as a “risk society.” Therefore, it seems that the grower–consumer relationship in Israeli CSAs receives the meaning “safe consumption” in a threatening and unreliable food sphere. Anat, mother of three children, describes this feeling exactly:

You know why I insist on [buying] organic [food] and why I order from Yossi [a farmer running a CSA]? Because I’ve read studies that show that by age five, all the development in a child’s brain takes place, so I decided that until the kids are five – I’m guarding them. I nourish! I’m a warrior! I’m a lioness! I will do all I can do so that they get the best nutrition possible […] I trust Yossi. I’ve visited his farm and I’ve seen how they work. I don’t trust the large marketing [conventional] chains, and I don’t trust Eden [Eden Teva Market] either.

Several consumers stated that the preference of consuming organic food via CSAs is derived from the desire to support local private growers. In the words of Oren, father of two from Jerusalem,

The problem with conventional [agriculture] is all over the world, and not only in Israel, so I buy organic food from Gilad [(a name of a CSA farmer)]. It is not cheap but I do it for my children, and I also like to support him. I know where my money is going.

Some CSA consumers referred to this practice as “local” and significantly different from buying organic food from organic retail chains. However, the CSA consumers who emphasized the local meaning were the ones holding the cosmopolitan cultural capital and those with significant global habitus (Illouz and John, 2003). For them, the connection between “organic” and “local” was formulated while living abroad for prolonged periods (e.g. relocated hi-tech workers, academics, and businesspersons). Thus, paradoxically, they first experienced the uniqueness and adventure of consuming “local” vegetables in the “global” sphere. For example, Rotem – a CSA consumer from Jerusalem – describes the uniqueness, adventure, and innovation of consuming “local” vegetables and the associative attachment developed in her memory between exotic vegetables and the experience of her stay abroad:

The CSA in California was especially cool. It was fun cooking there! What vegetables! Fresh and local heirloom tomatoes […] we got all the bizarre vegetables that grew there. Who even knew what heirloom tomatoes were? It really challenged me, culinary speaking. Or this vegetable, “kale” [a type of a leaf cabbage]. We only got it here [in Israel] years later from Nadav [The name of the CSA owner from whom she buys]. What excitement it was! […]. It really reminded me of California.

The vegetable known as “kale” indeed grows in a CSA near Jerusalem and is therefore considered “local” in the geographic sense, but from Rotem’s words, its “locality” is recruited to confirm her Californian cosmopolitan identity. In this way, the varied political meanings embodied in “locality” of organic food (environmentalism, anti-corporate ideas, community, etc.) are reduced to “quality” (fresh) and “uniqueness” (kale, for instance) and paradoxically express “globality.” This can also be seen as an expression of “boutiquization” of organic food consumption. Here, for example, Yehuda, a consumer of organic food who works in Hi-Tech, says,

I travel a lot overseas on short business trips. There I saw the organic vegetable scheme a while ago. I order [an organic vegetable box from a CSA] because it is so much fresher […]. In my childhood, I grew in a Moshav [cooperative settlement]. For years I’ve longed for vegetables this fresh. When I get home from work and the box is waiting by the door […] I pick up the box and like I do with a good glass of wine, I shake and smell … ah … the smell […] It reminds me of my childhood where we would eat [vegetables] straight from the field.

Therefore, the Israeli CSA model of “local” food seems to be an expression of the global trend of local eating, and a form of “communal” consumption without a real community, motivated by a search for trust in a neoliberal market society. Despite the evidence that Israeli CSA consumers seem relatively interested in civic values (such as supporting local private growers rather than large corporations), it seems that these values are mostly secondary when choosing to consume from CSAs.

Urban authenticity: “Orbanic” consumers

In recent years, there has been a global (Western) trend of “resurgence of food markets” (Zukin, 2008), in which farmers’ markets in urban areas became popular and thriving sites, where “green,” “alternative,” “local,” and “authentic” foods were marketed. Present day farmers’ markets gained recognition as sites reflecting actual re-localization (or re-embeddedness) of culinary culture. Organic food has become an integral component of farmers’ markets in Europe and North America and is a significant part of the product supply in these new markets. In Israel, the fashion of farmers’ markets and local food markets has also spread.

One of the initiatives of the Israeli Organic Farming Association was the establishment of an urban farmers’ market, in which only organic produce was offered for sale. From the beginning of its establishment, the market was attributed cosmopolitan images as a strategy to attract consumers: “[Organic Farmers’ Markets are] happening in Amsterdam, Berlin and Paris, and now … also in Israel!” – this was written on commercial signs and advertising leaflets distributed in preparation for the opening of the market. The name selected for the market “Orbanic” (a combination of the words “organic” and “urban”) symbolizes the founders’ intention of providing a sense of updated-global-urbanism.

The market was established in “Hatachana” (The Station) in Tel Aviv, an old train station compound that went through a gentrification process and became a site for recreation, leisure, and upscale shopping. Forty decorated and beautifully arranged stalls operated in the market square. Each stall prominently displayed a certificate from an organic supervision firm attesting to the food products being “strictly organic.” In most of the stalls, organic fruits, vegetables, and other organic foodstuffs (local and imported) were arranged in wooden crates and old farm carts. This design seeks to give visitors a sense of nostalgia – an imitation of the way vegetables and fruits were packaged in the past. This can be seen as a kind of “staged authenticity,” a commercially manufactured “authenticity” (MacCannell, 1976), or a simulacrum of authenticity – to use the terms of Jean Baudrillard (1994).

Here, for example, is a description of one of the consumer’s impressions, which she summarized in her personal blog:

Friday morning [and] I have a tight schedule: first – a visit to the organic market, then a yoga class. […] I meet a friendly and smiling stall owner. We start an organic conversation and tastings of a special strain of purslane that comes from France […] It’s been a long time since I’ve seen such crisp purslane. Purslane leaves are healthy and contain a lot of omega 3. The celebration continues and I become familiar with “spaghetti squash” – a pumpkin rich in carotenoids, which protect against heart disease, diabetes and even cancer. I add it to my ecological basket. During another visit, my eyes were attracted to the purple eggplants. I was already imagining how they will go into my Sicilian pasta.

This description thoroughly represents the associative and symbolic range from which the “organic discourse” in Orbanic market was composed. It points to the health and culinary virtues of the vegetables, emphasizing their exotic uniqueness and the global-gastronomic experience they represent, while the use of a fashionable cloth bag is presented as an act of ecological significance.

Geographers Benjamin Coles and Philip Crang (2011) maintain that naming a space in which food products are sold as “local market” gives the consumer a sense of participation in ethical action as well as an up-to-date fashionable experience. This generates de-fetishization of foods, on one hand (by revealing different aspects of the production process – for example, identifying farmers or places of origin), and re-fetishization, on the other hand (e.g. by hiding different exploitative social relations in the production process and labeling the products as “ethical” or “local”). Accordingly, the experience of shopping in Orbanic created a de-fetishistic coupling between the label “organic” and the term “local,” mainly due to the fact that there was an encounter between consumers and growers in the market. At the same time, the images “organic” and “local” express re-fetishization: while wandering in the market, I noticed that consumers and vendors alike responded to the imperative that encouraged them to engage in “locality.” Consumers often asked about the source of the crops and the vendors responded willingly and spoke about their lives in the rural areas. Thus, during a conversation, organic foods – both farmers’ products and imported organic products which were offered for sale – were intentionally loaded with meanings of localism.

However, paradoxically, these communicative interactions between organic farmers and consumers – which are perceived as an engagement in “locality” – actually strengthened the global symbolism of the market. Here, for example, is a text written on an on-line magazine that deals with topics of lifestyle:

“Hatachana” Organic Market – Buying Local: Equipped with my dynamic shopping cart I go shopping, like in a small village in Italy or Greece: fresh produce in small stalls.

This description illustrates how the consumption experience in the market was perceived: hedonistic, trendy, young, vibrant, and even a feel of being a tourist.

However, gradually, there were fewer and fewer consumers at the market, until it stopped operating after a brief period of a year. Some consumers argue that the reason the market closed is because the atmosphere in the market was fake, too clean, and “inauthentic.” Whether it was or not, the fact is that even though the market boasted having supervised and documented “organicness,” and direct personal contact with the farmers, the link between “organic,” “authenticity,” and “up datedness” was not created successfully in this market. This link actually exists in other older urban markets, such as the renewed Carmel Market in Tel Aviv and in new farmers’ markets built under the auspices of the global Slow Food movement. In these markets, organic food appears as “boutique food,” alongside non-organic gourmet and unique foods. Thus, it integrates a mixture of culinary representations of authenticity and locality.

One of my observations was in an organic store-stall, which opened in the Carmel market in Tel Aviv. The store is located on the main street of the market, across from a new lively café and a shop selling local and imported boutique cheeses. Many customers crowded together at the entrance of the shop. Among them, I met a few consumers who frequented Orbanic market before it closed. Most of them did not express any regret that the market closed. They actually noted their preference for the integration between organic foods, unique food products, and “authentic” atmosphere as a “consumer experience” that fits their urban lifestyle. Here, for example, Ido and Meital, Tel Aviv residents, say,

Every Friday we ride our bikes to the Carmel market. There we eat breakfast, buy organic vegetables and some special pasta […]. We host our friends for dinner very often. We prefer healthy foods. Sometimes we go to the farmers' market in Tel-Aviv port. We don’t go into Eden. It’s such a bourgeois supermarket! We also don’t order a delivery of organic boxes [from CSAs]. We buy here in the [urban] market. It’s much more authentic and much more fun.

This description illustrates the integration of organic food in the culinary repertoire of the young urban group in Israel, characterized by high cultural capital and taste made up of stylistic differentiation from the “mainstream” culture.

Sociologist Sharon Zukin describes the geography of farmers’ markets as projects of establishing space with the image of “oasis of authenticity” and which operate in gentrification processes (Zukin, 2008: 725). The organic food offered for sale in the Israeli urban food markets takes on a role of creating a sense of “authenticity” in its cosmopolitan-urban version and speaks to Israeli Westernizing elite, who are willing to demonstrate their cosmopolitan identity. However, it should be noted that organic food in itself, as it appeared in the Orbanic market (i.e. pure organic food, without any other “authentic” or “gourmet” foods), attracted a small number of consumers. For the majority, “organic” plays a secondary role to “authenticity” in their cultural repertoire (Swidler, 1986). For them, the preference for organic food is part of a multi-faceted taste package, symbolizing freshness, healthiness and localness.

Thus, the examination of organic food consumption patterns in Israeli farmers’ markets shows that the “citizenship-consumerism” hybrid is revealed as consisting of global-urban consumerism and of symbolic representations of citizen ideals such as locality and authenticity.

New Age organic consumers

The fourth social-cultural category is the New Age participants, those who include in their private and public lives alternative activities to the mainstream, and hold onto the perception of mutual ecology, which sees the world as an integral holistic entity. This category is prominently present today in Israeli society and is part of the new middle-class lifestyle in Israel (Simchai, 2009). The image of organic food as “ecological” and “alternative” is appropriate for this approach and therefore very common in different settlements of New Age participants.

One of these settlements is kibbutz Harduf. The kibbutz was founded by a group of young people who, while visiting Europe in the 1980s, were captivated by the anthroposophical philosophy (propagated by Rudolf Steiner) and sought to establish a cooperative community that would operate by it. As a source of livelihood, they established an organic and bio-dynamic agricultural sector. For almost 20 years, kibbutz Harduf members produced organic food products for self-consumption and they marketed it only on a small scale. In the late 1990s, their organic agricultural undertaking was purchased by Tnuva – Israel’s largest food corporation, which was then controlled by the global private equity and venture capital firm Apax Partners and nowadays is controlled by Bright Food (a multinational food and beverages manufacturing company headquartered in China).

Subsequently, the kibbutz products (and other organic food products, many imported from abroad) have been distributed on a mass scale under the brand name Harduf. The products on which the logo Harduf is displayed include organic cereals, organic chocolate milk, organic ketchup, frozen poultry grown on farms outside the kibbutz, organic frozen meat imported from Argentina, organic Italian pasta, and more. Thus, kibbutz Harduf has changed from a marker of “alternative organic agriculture” to a clear representative of the industrialization of organic agriculture in Israel.

Most of my interlocutors espousing anthroposophy – whether they are residents of kibbutz Harduf or followers of anthroposophy who live in other places – identify the brand with the kibbutz, and not with Tnuva. Many of them show a preference for organic products labeled as Harduf. For example, Dorit, an affiliate of anthroposophy from another kibbutz, says,

We buy organic packaged food at Rami Levi [a name of a conventional retail store chain]. There are all sorts of organic products there, but [among all organic products offered for sale in the supermarket] we prefer those of Harduf. [When I buy Harduf products] it’s a bit like connecting myself to kibbutz Harduf.

Most of the consumers interviewed did not criticize the sale of Harduf to Tnuva, and even when explicitly asked about it, they answered that they thought this move was acceptable. For example, Narkis, who is involved in an anthroposophic education institute, maintains,

I don’t think that makes Harduf any less organic […]. I think it’s even better, because with the help of Tnuva the access to healthier food can be expanded. But the truth is that there are things in Israel that concern me a lot more. For example, education, which is, by the way, another issue that Harduf excels at.

Indeed, the main drive for the popularity of the anthroposophic movement in Israel is education. In this educational system, a lot of attention is directed to the food served to the children, and even the curriculum includes an extensive reference to nutritional studies, agriculture, and cooking. Dalia, the appointed menu developer in one of the anthroposophic education institutes, explains,

We explain to the children what organic food is and how important it is for their health […]. The food in the kindergarten is not one hundred percent organic, but it is vegetarian and includes only healthy foods […]. The food is meticulous, healthy, nutritious, and vegetarian, strengthens and nurtures […] True, it is not completely organic, but it is good and healthy food.

Dalia’s remarks indicate that the anthroposophic educational system serves as an intermediary and translator of the abstract concept “organic” to “healthy and vegetarian.”

Moreover, the process of formulating the Israeli culinary-anthroposophic repertoire is based on “cross-cultural consumerism” (Howes, 1996), that is, introducing individuals to ideas, experiences, and knowledge about “other” cultures. For example, Gila, a 49-year-old anthroposophist living in kibbutz Harduf, describes her first encounter with eating habits that match the spirit of anthroposophy while visiting abroad:

I started studying anthroposophy in Berlin. In Israel, at that time, no one knew anything about it. Take the topic of ecology, for example. There [in Berlin] I learned about the importance of the subject […]. Then I lived for five years in the San Francisco area. Everyone there talked about healthy food and stuff like that […]. Today it has become completely mainstream, eating healthy and organic food. But I was already dealing with nutrition and ecology 30 years ago.

“Ecology,” as Gila said in her remarks, is an important component of the anthroposophical philosophy. Anthroposophical ideas relating to agriculture as a holistic practice are part of a wide ecological discourse, which is interwoven with New Age culture. This discourse is based on the recognition that human beings have an obligation to care for nature and its conservation and to strive for a society living in harmony with nature (Simchai, 2009: 90). Thus, one would expect that organic food would be an example for realizing theoretical anthroposophical ideas and that progressive projects and alternative action relating to food and environment would be woven around it in areas where people who espouse this doctrine live. However, at the heart of the anthroposophic discourse lays the concept of “personal transformation,” and social (and environmental) change is subjected to personal change (Simchai, 2009: 92–97). The words of Sivan – an anthroposophist consumer aged 32 – expose the predominance of the “personal” on environmental ecology and community:

We just buy organic out of habit […]. Look, you ask about ecology and fair trade, and it all speaks to me, but it’s not in my practical awareness. […] What is important to me is that the food will be full of life, food that nourishes you both spiritually and physically […]. I truly believe that everything begins in our body.

The expression “food full of life,” as well as other similar expressions such as “food that heals the body,” was repeated by many other New Age consumers. The main meaning of organic food – as arises in these sayings – is in creating individualistic spiritual and physical nourishment. Moreover, the act of consuming organic food is carried out on the personal level and not integrated into a collective action.

A description of organic food as a means of connecting between the personal body and soul, as a source of “positive energy” and personal “energetic nourishment,” recurred in the words of most of my interviewees espousing anthroposophy and are in keeping with perceptions and dogmas accepted in the New Age culture.

The British sociologist Steve Bruce claims that the New Age culture is characterized by an alliance between individualism and self-sanctification and concerns for the “other” (“other” in its broad sense, including care for nature and environment; Bruce, 1996). To use terminology suggested by Bruce, it can be summarized that the significance given to organic food as healthy illustrates the centrality of individualism and self-sanctification in the fundamental levels of the practices of anthroposophic organic food consumption. The concerns for the “other” (i.e. the “civic” dimension of the citizen-consumer hybrid) remain in symbolic levels. In other words, civic values – such as ecology and locality – are declared, but in practice, these values are marginalized and interwoven with the self-care aspects of New Age culture.