The changing practice of eating: evidence from UK time diaries, 1975 and 2000

This paper examines some central themes about change in consumption behaviour through an empirical investigation of the practice of eating. It analyses patterns of food consumption in the UK using time diary data from 1975 and 2000. The practice of eating is decomposed into four component activities which are used to explore systematically the inter-relationships between social processes - such as commodification and temporal fragmentation - and ways of providing and consuming food. It charts the expansion of eating out, the degree to which it substitutes for other eating activities, and the implications of its development for social relations and the temporal organization of daily life. Analysis reveals that food consumption continues to be differentiated along established lines of social division, although the content of those divisions has changed and varies across components of the practice. Increasing commodification of the food chain is documented, but without appearing to have a corrosive impact on household organization or social relationships. While tendencies indicative of temporal fragmentation are revealed, counter-tendencies exist which suggest that the practice of eating is resilient to many forms of external pressure. Finally, the application of a practice-based analytical approach permits critical evaluation of theories of social transformation.     

A Comparative Discussion of the Gendered Implications of Cash-for-Care Schemes: Markets, Independence and Social Citizenship in Crisis?

There are moves across many countries away from state-led provision of services for disabled people towards cash-based systems, which have been welcomed by disabled people as increasing choice and control over services and support, and increasing independence and social participation. However, feminist scholars have long warned about the implications of commodifying care for women, and the possible consequences of substituting cash for services for social citizenship have remained underexplored, for both disabled people generally, disabled women and mothers more particularly, and for personal assistants/care workers. This article will attempt to address that gap by carrying out a comparative literature review and policy analysis of the role of policy development and outcomes in cash-for-care schemes, looking comparatively across policy developments in several countries, as well as developed welfare states beyond Europe to examine: (a) the impact of the tensions between various governance levels, particularly local and national government; (b) the gendered impact of such policies on (for example) gendered divisions of paid and unpaid work, citizenship and social participation; (c) the impact such policies have, or are likely to have, on different groups of men and women across the life course and across different social and economic groups; and (d) how such policies can contribute to the well-being and/or detriment of different groups of women (and men) within different social, political, economic and historical contexts.     

一分耕耘未必有一分收获——当农民双脚站在市场经济之中

农村商品化和市场经济是改革开放以来农村发展和农政变迁的主要动力,也是主导"三农"讨论的主流话语。在前资本主义农耕社会的生存经济中,农民生计方式多种多样,且具有较高的自主性。在经历了商品化过程之后,农民的生计大多需要农业生产和外出务工的双重支持。通过经济力量的无声强制,农民的生产和生活被强制商品化,同时,一系列政策措施也鼓励农民融入商品经济之中。当农民被锁入市场经济之中,其自主性和自由度均大大降低,劳动与收获不再直接关联。对现代消费社会的拷问发现,商品消费本身不再是为了人类基本需要的满足,而是为了满足不断建构起来的欲望和意象。在社会发展和市场经济的任何阶段,人类都不应该忘记生活的目标和终极关怀。     

Commodification of rural places: A narrative of social fields,rural development,and football

One of the most significant recent elements of restructuring in rural areas is the transition from an economy based on agricultural production to an economy based on the countryside as a form of commodity. In this transition process, different narratives or images of an area are produced to promote villages and other places in the countryside as commodities. Much of the literature takes it for granted that outsiders control the processes of branding rural areas, but our case study demonstrates that the producers (as well as potential consumers) of the countryside as a commodity can be insiders within a community. In this paper, we demonstrate how a local football club can take a leading role in the process of commodification of rural places in the post-modern era. Football clubs are presented as commodities to attract investors, sponsors, and expertise from private businesses. In both commodification of rural places and football, the challenge is to construct narratives or images that correspond to the pre-existing expectations of consumers, whoever they might be. Our theory-informed empirical analyses illustrate the way in which the Norwegian football club Sogndal Football has been instrumental in the restructuring of the Sogndal community.     

GLOBALIZATION: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE WITHIN THE SPACE ECONOMY OF LATE CAPITALISM

This article analyses the process of globalization from the perspective of a 'political economy of space' where the interactions of the processes of capitalist accumulation within contexts of geographic and social space has profound shaping effects upon the nature of politics, economics and society more generally. The argument will show that contemporary globalization has two dimensions: outward into geographic space, and inward into culture and society. The focus then moves to culture and information technology within the space economy of late capitalism and argues that a crisis of finite geographic space has led to the deepening of the commodificationary processes of capitalist accumulation into the 'identity-spaces' of culture and society. For hugely popular 'cyber-gurus' such as Howard Rheingold and Myron W . Krueger, the development of information technologies such as the Internet-derived 'virtual communities' are spaces where new forms of democracy and 'being' can emerge. This article argues that 'cyberspace' and 'virtual communities' are deeply dystopic and alienated spaces, and cyber-Utopian dreams of other, possible worlds made virtual through information technology are at best naive, when it is realised that the information revolution that evolved from the processes of a particular type of globalization, has conceived and developed technologies with primarily profit, productivity, surveillance labour-saving and escapism in mind.     

Emotion management: dabbling in mystery - white witchcraft or black art?

The emergence of the construct 'Emotional Intelligence' offers prospects for the management of that hitherto intangible asset, emotion. There is an interest in emotion to the extent that this can lead to increased productivity and manageability. Organizations require a degree of human commitment and identification which are seen to give rise to improved performance and aspects of emotional intelligence such as trust and interpersonal relations link to ideas of attachment and identification. The purpose of this paper is, initially, to suggest that managerial aspiration in this regard might fall somewhat short of employee response. First, the psychoanalytic argument is used to make the case that individual capacity for emotion management might be limited. Furthermore, individual motivation or willingness to engage with organizational goals should not be presumed. The possibility that many individuals will have goals of their own, leading to a more instrumental orientation to organizationally mandated norms for feeling displays, is largely ignored in the emotional intelligence discourse. This affords the opportunity to explore the phenomenon at a more critical level. The question of whose identities predominate over others' deserves attention. The final argument is that attempts such as these to shape the ways individuals experience, understand, judge and conduct themselves (Foucault 1986a, 1988, in Hall and du Gay 1996) fit neatly with the desire to commodify emotion, to turn emotion into something that can be manipulated and exchanged in the same way as other, more tangible, assets.     

A tainted trade? Moral ambivalence and legitimation work in the private security industry1

The private security industry is often represented - and typically represents itself - as an expanding business, confident of its place in the world and sure of its ability to meet a rising demand for security. But closer inspection of the ways in which industry players talk about its past, present and future suggests that this self-promotion is accompanied by unease about the industry's condition and legitimacy. In this paper, we analyse the self-understandings of those who sell security - as revealed in interviews conducted with key industry players and in a range of trade materials - in order to highlight and dissect the constitutive elements of this ambivalence. This analysis begins by describing the reputational problems that are currently thought to beset the industry and the underlying fears about its status and worth that these difficulties disclose. We then examine how security players seek to legitimate the industry using various narratives of professionalization. Four such narratives are identified - regulation, education, association and borrowing - each of which seeks to justify private security and enhance the industry's social worth. What is striking about these legitimation claims is that they tend not to justify the selling of security in market terms. In conclusion we ask why this is the case and argue that market justifications are 'closed-off' by a moral ambivalence that attaches to an industry trading in products which cannot guarantee to deliver the condition that its consumers crave.