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Maria Fuentes.

Maria Fuentes

Senior lecturer, associate professor

Maria Fuentes.

Reconfiguring food materialities : plant-based food consumption practices in antagonistic landscapes

Author

  • Maria Fuentes
  • Christian Fuentes

Summary, in English

The aim of this paper is to conceptualize and discuss how plant-based food consumption is accomplished in an environment pre-configured by meat-based food practices. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with thirteen consumers, and using a socio-material practice approach, the paper demonstrates how plant-based shopping, cooking and eating practices are enabled and shaped by material reconfigurations. The paper shows how developments such as an expanding range of plant-based food products, the increased use of social media, and the re-appropriation of shops and kitchens all entail the continuous reconfiguration of the materials involved in shopping, cooking and eating practices. Together, these material reconfigurations form a socio-material landscape that is mutable and changing, thus enabling plant-based food consumption. In addition, the paper also suggests that these material reconfigurations are not something that can be managed due to having evolved as a collective process in which multiple actors take part, all guided by their own interests. In doing so, the paper illustrates that, in order to understand plant-based consumption, as well as its emergence, performance, and complexities, we must take into account the practical and material aspects involved, not just the cultural or cognitive mechanisms.

Department/s

  • Department of Service Studies

Publishing year

2022

Language

English

Pages

520-539

Publication/Series

Food, Culture and Society

Volume

25

Issue

3

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing

Topic

  • Business Administration
  • Social Sciences Interdisciplinary

Keywords

  • Consumption
  • materiality
  • plant-based
  • practice theory
  • vegetarian

Status

Published

Project

  • Alternative Food Markets: Promoting new modes of food provisioning and consumption
  • Service Studies Consumption

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1552-8014