Handmade Matters: (Re)Imagining "Homemade" Food at the Boundaries of Food Swap Circuits

• In Event: 113 - Regular Session. Consumers and Consumption 1

Abstract

Food swaps are bartering events where individual’s gather at a central location to “swap” foods they have made, grown, or foraged themselves for other similarly produced products. Sociologists have long recognized the importance of stable socio-cognitive category meanings as bases for valuation (DiMaggio, 1987); within the context of food swap, exchange participants demonstrate considerable uncertainty about what fits within the category of “handmade food” and what will be valued. Given the fact that stable, understood categories have been shown to be critical in facilitating market actors’ perceptions of commensurability (Espeland and Stevens, 1998), the empirical case of food swap exchange networks provides an opportunity for theorizing situations in which unstable category meanings are socially useful—even if inefficient. Based upon 12 months of participant observation in a Boston area food swap, and in-depth semi-structured interviews with the six regular attendees, we intend to demonstrate the ways in which groups may elaborate multiplex and even inconsistent standards of evaluation in the process of maintaining the boundaries of networks of exchange. As a result, even within a single consumer space—in this case, a single food swap—multiple modes of evaluation may exist, competing for the ability to define the evaluative criteria to characterize a “good” trade. This is particularly useful when circuit members are seeking distinction, as tacking between competing standards of evaluation requires significant field-specific cultural capital. At the boundaries of food swap circuits, we witness the careful imagining and reimagining of even the most seemingly settled category: homemade food.

Authors

• Connor John Fitzmaurice, Boston University

• Juliet B. Schor, Boston College