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The purpose of this chapter is twofold. First, it aims to understand the interplay between everyday life and prefiguration. It does this by scrutinizing three key facets of everyday life and discussing which type of everyday practices, and under which circumstances, can be considered prefigurative. Second, it aims to reflect on how people, individually and collectively, try to articulate and respond to challenges posed by the contemporary capitalist system of production, trade, sale and consumption. It does this by focusing on everyday life as a key locus for change. The chapter begins with a critical appraisal of conceptualizing ‘the everyday’. After this general and theoretical discussion, it highlights how contemporary activism politicizes the everyday. Then it uses new food movements to explore the role that more personal forms of engagement can play in shaping people’s political consciousnesses and motivating them to collective action. Finally, the chapter concludes by discussing the potentials and limits of everyday life practices for prefiguring social change.
Intersectionality is a concept that has received little attention in scholarship on consumption, despite its significant relevance. Marie Plessz and Stefan Wahlen organised a roundtable held at the European Sociological Association (ESA) Consumption research network (RN5) interim meeting, 2 September 2022, in Oslo. This is a summarised and edited transcript of this roundtable discussion. As such, it advances the conceptual lens of intersectionality applied to (food) consumption studies and critically assesses possible future avenues of research that build on existing approaches. It first discusses the role of social and political positions that might be considered intersectionally, to then outline central characteristics as well as empirical strategies when investigating food. This transcript also showcases a possible novel format that is welcomed in the journal Consumption and Society.
