Contestaçao e consumo alternativo. A moralidade polìtica da comida

Developing the idea that consumption is a moral field and applying it to the domain of food, I suggests that we must study its political morality as a process of ongoing negotiation of the social order. While we should abstain from simple moralization, moral discourses surrounding food practices are crucial to that process and may fruitfully be studied as mportant indicators of what consumption means. Drawing on convention theory, different moral rhetorics and orders of justification become visible and are stressed especially in episodes of contestation. These episodes often overturn conventional and well-established discourses of quality, use and recommendation. The paper argues that contestation and critique itself is related to a breach of trust in the market, the effects of which will vary along with specific political, cultural and organisational features. Applied to the arena of food consumption, this framework helps considering how and to what effects food consumption has been associated with symbolically mediated notions of order. I consider the growth of self-professed alternative forms of consumption (from the rising demand for organic food across Europe and the USA to the ever-growing variety of Fair-Trade products) to explore the particular notions of quality as well as gratification and consumption that they elaborate. The analsysis offers a map of these phenomena and shows that overall the consumer is posited as both increasingly ‘active’ and increasingly ‘public’, the dominant attitude being one of re-evaluation of what is (right) to consume, rather renouciation, reduction or de-scaling. Opening the special issue on "Food for Thought - Comida para pensar" of the Brasilian Anthropology/Archeology Journal "Tessituras", it is a translation of Sassatelli, R. (2004). "The Political Morality of Food: Discourses, Contestation and Alternative Consumption". In M. Harvey et al. (eds.), Qualities of Food, Manchester University Press, pp. 176–191