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- Author or Editor: Christian Fuentes x
The aim of this paper is to empirically explore and conceptualise how marketing and markets shape the formation of edibility in the context of alternative proteins. While meat and dairy substitutes have attracted commercial and scholarly attention, promoting alternative proteins more widely has often proved to be difficult. Alternative proteins often challenge consumers’ understandings of what is safe, appropriate and enjoyable food to consume. Disgust, distrust and even opposition are common consumer reactions. Taking a constructivist market studies approach and drawing on an ethnographic study of the marketing and consumption of plant-based substitutes, we explore the work performed by marketing to overcome these problems and make plant-based substitutes edible. Making use of the concepts of market device and qualification, the analysis shows that plant-based substitutes are constructed as edible in two ways. First, through productising and the related practices of packaging, disclosing, aestheticising and branding, plant-based substitutes are qualified as safe, enjoyable and appropriate for consumption. Second, through animating plant-based substitutes are linked to established food traditions, social eating and the performance of family, thereby creating a meaningful context for this food. It is through this dual move that plant-based substitutes become edible. Our analysis shows that edibility formation went beyond merely making plant-based substitutes tasty or acceptable. The market devices studied worked to construct plant-based substitutes as a much-needed resource for everyday (plant-based) food practices.
In a circular system, consumers need to acquire, use, look after and part with products in ways that recirculate or reuse materials and minimise waste. Thus, although seldom made explicit, consumer care is built into the circular economy project. In this article, we aim to contribute to the emerging body of sociological work on circular consumption by foregrounding the role of care in the performance of circular clothing practices. Theoretically, we combine previous care literature with theories of practice. The analysis builds on an ethnographically inspired study of 24 households’ circular clothing consumption. Our findings suggest that accomplishing circularity in everyday clothing consumption involves developing care awareness and taking on responsibility for the care of clothes as a way of caring for distant others. We also show that multiple care struggles and care dilemmas complicate the accomplishment of care in this context. The article ends by outlining the possible contributions of developing an awareness and understanding of how care and circular consumption are intertwined.
