Buying Local as Building Community: Ethical Consumption Among People Who do not Fit the Mold

• In Event: 512 - Section on Consumers and Consumption Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 01. Food, Ethics and Interventions

Abstract

Who practices “buying local,” and why? In this paper, I challenge the notion that buying local is the terrain largely of privileged and politically engaged consumers for whom environmental concerns also figure prominently in consumption practices. Specifically, drawing on Holt’s model of the relationship between cultural capital and consumption, Soper’s concept of “alternative hedonism,” and interviews with a socioeconomically diverse group of people, I make two arguments. First, while relatively few people have access to robust local food systems, buying local by supporting businesses seen as rooted in regional economic and civic life is widespread even among people lacking in cultural capital, economic capital or interest in conventional politics. Second, buying local among people who do not fit the mold of the “typical” ethical consumer is not consciously connected to concern for environmental problems. Rather, the buying local practiced by this understudied group is motivated by the desire to directly benefit community members and secure public goods such as good jobs, walkable downtowns, civic pride, and safe streets. These findings show that Holt’s original association of low cultural capital consumers with a preference for “local” things continues to have significant explanatory power, even when revised to incorporate normative as well as aesthetic motivations. Moreover, the voices that come through in my interviews suggest that Soper’s reframing of ethical consumption as enlightened self-interest is incomplete if not broadened to include social concerns only indirectly connected to environmental problems, such as economic inequality and unemployment.

Author

• Ethan D. Schoolman, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey