Contestaçao e consumo alternativo. A moralidade polìtica da comida

Applying the idea that that consumption is a moral field to the domain of food, I suggests that we must study its political morality as an ongoing process of negotiation of the social order. While we should abstain from simple moralization, moral discourses surrounding food practices are crucial to that process and should be studied as an important indicator of what it is to consume. Drawing on convention theory, we may see that different moral rhetorics and orders of justification become visible and are stressed especially in moments or episodes of contestation. These episodes often overturn conventional and well-established discourses of quality, use and recommendation. Contestation 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. This general framework is applied to the arena of food consumption. Food consumption in particular 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 notion of quality 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 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