Still blaming the consumer? Geographies of responsibility in domestic food safety practices

Meah, Angela

doi:10.1080/09581596.2013.791387

Cited by 53 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…This is not in itself a novel observation. Within Critical Public Health, for example, Evans (2011), Milne (2011 and Meah (2014) have provided empirical studies of food waste and food safety practices, respectively, using these to critique behaviourbased approaches in which associated 'risks' are treated as matters of individual consumer responsibility. Others have made similar points, highlighting the salience of Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and practice for health and well-being, or invoking Giddens' structuration theory as a means of overcoming the divide between agency and structure (see Maller, in press).…”

Section: Introduction: Behaviour Change Paradigms In Public Healthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theories of practice and public health: understanding (un)healthy practices

Blue

Shove

Carmona

et al. 2014

Critical Public Health

392

358

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Psychological understandings and individualistic theories of human behaviour and behaviour change have dominated both academic research and interventions at the 'coalface' of public health. Meanwhile, efforts to understand persistent inequalities in health point to structural factors, but fail to show exactly how these translate into the daily lives (and hence health) of different sectors of the population. In this paper, we suggest that social theories of practice provide an alternative paradigm to both approaches, informing significantly new ways of conceptualising and responding to some of the most pressing contemporary challenges in public health. We introduce and discuss the relevance of such an approach with reference to tobacco smoking, focusing on the life course of smoking as a practice, rather than on the characteristics of individual smokers or on broad social determinants of health. This move forces us to consider the material and symbolic elements of which smoking is comprised, and to follow the ways in which these elements have changed over time. Some of these developments have to do with the relation between smoking and other practices such as drinking alcohol, relaxing and socialising. We suggest that intervening in the future of smoking depends, in part, on understanding the nature of these alliances, and how sets of practices co-evolve. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of taking social practices as the central focus of public health policy, commenting on the benefits of such a paradigmatic turn, and on the challenges that this presents for established methods, policies and programmes.

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Section: Introduction: Behaviour Change Paradigms In Public Healthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theories of practice and public health: understanding (un)healthy practices

Blue

Shove

Carmona

et al. 2014

Critical Public Health

392

358

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“…This paper considers the ways in which the idea, the vocabulary and the category of 'the consumer' feature in relation to the politics of sustainability. In doing so, it joins debates that bring the geographies of responsibility into dialogue with contemporary understandings of consumption Jackson et al, 2009;Mansvelt, 2008;Meah, 2014;Ormond and Goodman, 2015;Popke, 2006;Walker, 2015). Inspiration is drawn from Clive Barnett, Nick Clarke and colleagues (for example Barnett et al, 2008Barnett et al, , 2011Clarke et al, 2007a), whose analysis explores the political rationalities of ethical consumption and the claims it makes on the responsibilities of individuals as consumers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructing and mobilizing ‘the consumer’: Responsibility, consumption and the politics of sustainability

2017

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This paper advances critical perspectives on the governance of sustainable consumption by exploring the ways in which 'the consumer' is constructed and mobilized by strategic actors and organizations. Existing approaches draw on theories of practice to emphasize the limitations of governing through behaviour change. Whilst this provides a welcome corrective to the overemphasis on individual responsibility in sustainability research and policy, fundamental questions concerning changes over time, variation across substantive domains, and the mechanisms through which authorities and intermediaries responsibilize 'the consumer' are neglected. By way of rejoinder, we suggest that attention should be paid to the project of sustainable consumption and -following Clive Barnett, Nick Clarke and colleagues' analysis of ethical consumption campaigning -the ways in which it engages consuming subjects and mobilizes the rhetorical figure of 'the consumer'. To illustrate, we present the findings from an empirical study -drawing on documentary sources as well as 38 key informant interviews -of how the challenge of food waste reduction has been framed, interpreted and responded to in the UK. Our analysis suggests that initial responses to the issue made claims on the responsibilities of individuals as consumers, but that this quickly gave way to an emergent sense of shared and distributed responsibility. To conclude we argue for the importance of exploring specific instances of sustainable consumption governance and their underlying political rationalities, as well as periodizing these accounts.

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“…Similarly Meah (2014) uses Massey's framings of responsibility and that of 'victim blaming' in a study on domestic food safety practices. Drawing on work by Jackson et al (2010) which looked at geographies of responsibility in the chicken supply chain, Meah (2014) sees a tendency in the scientific community to prioritise individuals' responsibility for food safety, this within a wider context of Beck's (1992) 'risk distributing' society where all participants seek to pass responsibility of risk on to others. I seek to extend this argument by applying this concept of geographies of responsibility to the way responsibility for diet is placed and framed in newspaper coverage of nutrition research into bowel cancer and by examining whether the UK news media reinforces an individualistic approach in its coverage of diet--related cancer prevention research.…”

Section: Nutrition and Geographies Of Responsibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Mediating the spaces of diet and health: A critical analysis of reporting on nutrition and colorectal cancer in the UK

Wells

2017

Geoforum

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Citation: Wells, R. (2017). Mediating the spaces of diet and health: A critical analysis of reporting on nutrition and colorectal cancer in the UK. Geoforum, 84, pp. 228-238. doi: 10.1016Geoforum, 84, pp. 228-238. doi: 10. /j.geoforum.2016 This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent AbstractThe media are one of the main arenas in which nutrition information is framed and developed. Research has shown a predominantly individualistic framing of diet--related health issues such as obesity, type--2 diabetes and coronary heart disease in international media coverage. These issues are framed as personal, 'lifestyle' issues rather than requiring policy or structural change. In addition, research has shown a tendency in nutrition research and media coverage of it, to emphasize individual ingredients or components more than overall diet. The media have a tendency to report diet related research simplistically, often without contextualization. Taking a case study approach, this paper analyses UK news media coverage and framing of British Medical Journal (BMJ) published research into dietary fibre and bowel cancer risk. I investigate how the health issue fibre and bowel cancer is framed and dissect the process of mediation (from press release to mass media to local media), analysing the shifting 'geographies of responsibility' that result. This paper argues that media coverage of research into diet and bowel cancer can be explained by the technologies, conventions and routines of media representation. Key gatekeepers were found to have an important role in framing the information that was reported. Taking a critical approach, this paper argues that like obesity, type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease, coverage of nutritional means of preventing bowel cancer is set predominantly in the 'lifestyle' frame, often laying responsibility for increasing dietary fibre at the door of the individual rather than looking at broader social, economic, or political drivers of dietary change.

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Still blaming the consumer? Geographies of responsibility in domestic food safety practices

Cited by 53 publications

References 55 publications

Theories of practice and public health: understanding (un)healthy practices

Theories of practice and public health: understanding (un)healthy practices

Constructing and mobilizing ‘the consumer’: Responsibility, consumption and the politics of sustainability

Mediating the spaces of diet and health: A critical analysis of reporting on nutrition and colorectal cancer in the UK

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