‘The Invisible Mouth’: Mobilizing ‘the Consumer’ in Food

Production-Consumption Networks
Dr Stewart Lockie
Director
Centre for Social Science Research
Central Queensland University
Rockhampton QLD 4702
Australia
Ph: +61-7-49306539
Fax: +61-7-49306402
Email: s.lockie@cqu.edu.au

For presentation to Rethinking Food Production-Consumption: Integrative

Perspectives on Agrarian Restructuring, Agro-Food Networks and Food Politics,
Theme 1, Theorizing Food Production-Consumption, University of California, Santa
Cruz, 30 November–1 December, 2001.

Abstract
The distanciation of production-consumption relationships in space and time, and the
historically productivist bias of social theory, have contributed to the development of
sociologies of food production and consumption as largely unrelated academic
discourses. Production-based agri-food studies have tended to treat consumption as
either a domain of social practice distinct from, but determined by, production, or as a
source of ‘demands’ that producers must compete among themselves to meet. Both
perspectives fail to deal either with the complexity of food consumption practices or
their relationships with practices of food provision. One solution to this
problem—informed by actor-network theory and commodity systems analysis—has
been the examination of specific commodity chains, or networks, and the material and
symbolic transformations that substances undergo as they move from the point of
production to the point of ingestion. However, as a number of studies have found,
simply adding the hitherto neglected activity of consumption to the end of the
commodity chain has proved difficult; this method ultimately favoring the analysis of
relatively small chains for niche and specialty foods for which specific actors may
unproblematically be identified. This paper argues that while the conceptualization of
production-consumption in terms of actor-networks is itself robust, the
methodological injunction to simply follow actors through networks is problematic.
Additional conceptual and methodological tools are needed that allow an examination
of the ways in which actors seek to render others knowable and governable ‘at a
distance’; that is, to order diffuse and complex networks. In much the same way, for
example, that the point of production has become increasingly invisible to the
consumers of industrially produced foods, so too are those ingesting food potentially
invisible to its producers. ‘The consumer’ is, however, made knowable through the
application of technologies including market research, survey data and point of sale
record keeping. Investigation of the ways in which ‘the consumer’ is made knowable
within rapidly extending organic food networks illustrates the ways in which ensuing
discourses of ‘consumer demand’ are deployed to mobilize actors at multiple points
within each network—including the point of ingestion from which this demand is
purported to flow.
Key words: actor-network theory, governmentality, production-consumption
networks, organic food

Introduction

These days it seems almost passé to note that the social sciences in general, and the
sociology of agriculture in particular, have largely ignored the issue of consumption.
While sociologies of food production and food consumption have existed historically
as largely unrelated academic discourses (Tovey, 1997), today the need to address
both seems self-evident. What more is to be gained by continuing to berate the
‘founding fathers’ for their productivist and structuralist biases? Probably very little.
But there is much to be gained, this paper argues, by continuing to problematize the
ways in which the concepts of production and consumption are brought together and
are subjected to empirical scrutiny.

This paper continues a project that attempts to deal sociologically with what appears
to be the increasing influence of food consumers in the ‘greening’ of food production-
consumption networks in a manner that gives adequate consideration to the numerous
processes and actors that bring, so to speak, the full array of foods and environmental
claims to the table (see also Lawrence et al. 1999; Lockie et al. 2000; Lockie and
Collie, 1999; Lockie and Kitto, 2001). Lockie and Kitto (2000), in particular, sets out
a theoretical and methodological approach that advocates the use of actor-network
theory to focus increased attention on the symbolic economy of food; the complex
and relational nature of power as it is extended through production-consumption
networks to effect ‘action at a distance’; and the centrality of nature and technology to
those networks.

In practice, however, we have found that in following the theoretical and

methodological approach advocated in Lockie and Kitto (2000) it remains difficult to
tackle the field of consumption adequately. This problem is not unique to our
approach. In a recent reprise on Commodity Systems Analysis Friedland (2001)
argues that the complexity of social relations involved in bringing food to the table
has mitigated against holistic analyses of ‘commodity systems’ in favor of particular
aspects of commodities. He also acknowledges criticism that consumption, as one of
those potential aspects, has been relatively ignored. Similarly, Fine (1995; Fine and
Leopold 1993; Fine et al. 1996) has been criticized for arguing that we need to deal
with the full material culture and consumption of foods only to retreat empirically to a
productivist and distinctly deterministic stance as these prove too complex to deal
with within the Systems of Provision approach that he develops (Lockie and Kitto,
2000).

Within this paper I return to the conceptualization of production-consumption

networks and elaborate on the actor-network theory-inspired approach developed in
Lockie and Kitto (2000). I do this with particular reference to Miller and Rose’s
(1990, 1997; Rose and Miller, 1992) meshing of Latour’s (1987) concept of ‘action at
a distance’ with Foucault’s (1991) concept of governmentality and their application of
this framework to the analysis of the mobilization of ‘the consumer’. While notions of
‘the consumer’ and ‘consumer demand’ may appear theoretically untenable—as all
too obvious social constructs that probably obfuscate more power relations than they
illuminate—it becomes clear when applying Miller and Rose’s (1997) approach to the
mobilization of actors to buy and eat organic food that discourses of ‘consumer
demand’ are, in fact, of great empirical importance. An explosion in consumer
demand is widely held to be responsible for current growth rates in the organic sector
of 20 to 50 percent per annum (Acres, July 2000: 1), straining the ability of producers,
retailers and so on to meet demand and creating an attractive environment for the
entry of new participants hitherto neither interested in organics nor committed to the
ideological principles that saw it emerge in the first place (Burch et al, 2001;
Coombes and Campbell, 1998; Lyons, 1999, 2001). But who are the apparently
sovereign ‘consumers’ responsible for this growth and how do they place ‘demands’?
Is the ‘invisible mouth’ of ‘the consumer’ to replace Adam Smith’s mysterious
‘invisible hand’ in the maximization of utility and the allocation of agri-food
resources to their most economically efficient use? Strained this metaphor might be,
but the idea of ‘consumer demand’ is heavily implicated in attempts to render food
consumption knowable, and thus manipulable, by those seeking to enroll others and
thus to extend their own production-consumption networks.

Bringing consumption in?

It is worth setting out at this point why a consideration of consumption requires a

thorough reconceptualization of our approach to agri-food studies rather than simply a
refocusing of attention. As Friedland (2001) points out, little is to be gained by over-
theorising. It is notable, however, that until recently most accounts of consumption
within agri-food studies dichotomised production and consumption and—in a manner
that reproduced other longstanding dichotomies within social theory between
structure and agency, macro and micro-levels of analysis, and so on—dealt with
consumption either as a set of practices manipulated by capital and the state in the
interest of capital accumulation or as the simple agglomeration of individually free
and rational choices (Lockie and Collie, 1999).

One approach to the analysis of the interrelations between the production and
consumption of food that avoids such dichotomization and is endorsed by Friedland
(2001) for its comprehensivity is Dixon’s (1999) cultural economy model. The
cultural economy model proposed by Dixon retains the central problematic of much
agrarian political economy; namely, that of locating the shifting locus if power within
food systems. However, rather than simply adding consumption to the end of
Friedland’s Commodity Systems Analysis (CSA)—with its focus on production
practices, grower organisation and organisations, labour as a factor of production,
science production and application, and marketing and distribution networks—Dixon
(1999: 156) argues for an analysis of ‘the cultural construction of economic processes
and patterns’. By doing so, Dixon argues that it becomes possible to consider a wider
variety of processes that are used to construct value; incorporate non-commoditized
units of production such as households and communities and non-commoditized
exchange; understand the impact of new authority relations such as those established
through the nutrition science industry; focus on processes of exchanging symbolic
value; and emphasize the role of women across the food system.
Even a minimalist approach to the incorporation of consumption—if it is to avoid
either pole in the ‘production of consumption’ versus ‘dictatorship of the consumer’
dichotomy (Miller, 1995)—requires some rethinking of how we also tackle the
questions of production, retailing and so on. Dixon (1999) thus proposes a number of
additional categories to be incorporated within (not just appended to) an extended
CSA, including consumption, product design processes and non-commoditized
production, together with a semi-autonomous sphere of distribution and exchange.

Dixon (1999: 158) concedes that by ‘extending the data collection into consumption
the very clarity that is so prominent in Friedland’s CSA model is diminished’, but
argues that this is justified on the basis that ‘the elongated CSA can help to determine
where the balance of power between production and consumption lies’. The question
must surely be asked, however, as to just how viable this particular
problematique—that of locating the locus of power—really is. In practical terms, the
social relations involved in the production and consumption of food are so extensive
and complex that charting them all in relation to even a single commodity is not
possible unless mainstream industrialised commodities are ignored in favour of
relatively small chains for niche and speciality products. As Dixon (2000, cited in
Friedland, 2001: 83) states, ‘a single commodity could consume a life-time’s
research’. What this means, of course, is that a whole range of theoretical propositions
and assumptions, whether stated or not, come to the fore in the determination of just
what aspects of a ‘commodity system’ warrant analysis and how sense is to be made
of the data collected. Starting with a modernist conception of power as something that
is a property of individuals and organisations Dixon concludes her examination of the
Australian domestic chicken meat ‘complex’ with the finding that effective control
lies mostly with supermarket retailers and less so with fast food outlets. Nutritionists,
market researchers and other specialists in cultural representation were also found to
play a minor role. Producers and consumers are effectively disempowered.

The simplistic critique of Dixon’s approach is the observation that supermarkets do

not force people to buy chickens. Nor do they stop people from buying chickens
elsewhere. Indeed, the recent interest of supermarkets in the organic sector may be
seen as much as an attempt to stop the flow of customers to alternative retailers as a
strategy to identify new avenues of accumulation. There is no doubt that large
retailers have become enormously influential. But there is a substantial difference
between influence and control. By attributing power to individuals and
organisations—even to very big organisations—Dixon loses sight of the social
relationships that are necessary for resources such as point of sale records,
advertising, location, shelving practices etc to actually influence other actors. It is also
telling that the supermarkets themselves tell a very different story. Is the discourse of
‘consumer demand’ that they participate in to be dismissed as simply disingenuous, or
wrong?

Just as the concepts of production and consumption make little sense in isolation from
each other, so the notion of power must be understood as a property of relationships
and not of the individuals involved (Foucault, 1986; Giddens, 1984). The ‘sovereign-
subject’ metaphor of power (Foucault, 1980) that underlies attempts to locate the
locus of control within ‘food systems’—together with its focus on centres of power
and determinate social structures—is fatally flawed. Understanding power, as
Foucault argues (1980, 1986), requires us ‘to cut off the King’s head’ and to
acknowledge that power is unstable, reversible, pervasive and, as often as not,
accompanied by resistance and evasion. It follows that power may take many forms,
at times concentrated and hierarchical and at times dispersed (Hindess, 1996).
Searching for the locus of control within the ‘food system’ is likely to conceal as
many relationships as it reveals. This paper now turns to a consideration of theoretical
approaches more firmly embedded within a relational framework before applying
these to the mobilisation of people as organic consumers.

A relational framework for production-consumption studies

The framework that is developed here draws on two areas of theory: first, the work of
Latour, Callon, Law and others on what has become known as actor-network theory;
and second, on Miller and Rose’s integration of Latour’s concept of ‘action at a
distance’ with Foucault’s concept of governmentality, particularly as applied by these
authors to the question of how people are constructed and mobilized as ‘consumers’.

One way of characterizing actor-network theory is as a collective attempt to dissolve

dichotomies between: macro and micro-levels of sociological analysis; the role of
structure and agency in the constitution of the social; and the very ideas of the social
and the natural as distinct and independent spheres of reality. The resolution of these
dualisms offered by actor-network theory can be described as relational-materialism;
a ‘semiotics of materiality’ that conceptualizes all objects in terms of their
relationships with others (Law, 1999: 4). The hybridized concept of the ‘actor-
network’ is itself ‘intentionally oxymoronic’, combining and problematizing the
conventional distinction between structure and agency (Law, 1999: 1). But rather than
offering alternative definitions, concepts like agency and structure are treated as
research questions (Latour, 1999). It is argued that by making no a priori assumptions
about to whom or what agency should be attributed, ‘revealing things may happen,
theoretically and empirically’ (Callon and Law, 1995: 483).

The methodological approach thus suggested by actor-network theory is deceptively

simple; ‘following the actors’—whoever and whatever they may be—as they engage
in the process of enrolling others in networks (Latour, 1987). This injunction has been
picked up by a number of food researchers (Busch and Juska, 1997; McMannus,
2001; Sousa and Busch, 1998) who have tended to neglect the theoretical arguments
that underlie this apparently simple directive. The social, as conceived in actor-
network theory, is radically relational; action, intentionality, consciousness,
subjectivity and morality all deriving from the relations between entities within
networks as opposed to either the individual or the totality. This has clear implications
for any conceptualization of consumption since both the self and the collective are
decentred as the focus of strategic intention and agency and power conceptualized as
emergent and variable outcomes of relationships within networks (Callon, 1991,
1998; Callon and Law, 1995; Law, 1991). This is consistent with the broad trend in
sociology towards relational theories of power (eg. Foucault, 1986; Giddens, 1984),
but adds to these by focusing more clearly on the processes through which networks
are constructed and stabilized and by admitting the possibility that non-humans may
play critical roles within these processes. The concept of translation is used here to
refer to the process of aligning the properties, actions, interests or concerns of actants
in order to enroll them in networks. ‘To translate is to displace’ and ‘to express in
one’s own language what others say and want, why they act in the way they do and
how they associate with each other’ (Callon, 1986: 223). This ‘is a process before it is
a result’ and networks are marked often by fluidity, instability and dissidence (Callon,
1986: 224). It is also a politically charged process involving exclusion, redefinitions
of the self and, frequently, denial of the contribution that subservient actants have
made to network construction (Leigh Star, 1991).

It is perhaps not surprising that commentaries on actor-network theory frequently

focus on the argument that non-humans play central roles in the networks of the
social; that social agency is, in fact, often expressed through ‘hybrid collectives’ of
people, nature and technology. Indeed, from a traditional sociological perspective this
argument appears either revolutionary, or scandalous, in its rejection of the
sociological tradition of always explaining social phenomena in terms of human
intentions, relationships and institutions. The refusal of actor-network theorists to
answer directly the question of just how agency is to be ascribed (Callon and Law,
1995) has led to criticism that they fail to distinguish adequately between the variable
contributions that actants of different kinds may make to the construction of networks
(Murdoch, 2001). Hacking (1999), for example, argues that clear distinctions must be
drawn between human and non-human actants on the basis of human capacity for
language, consciousness, reflection and intentional resistance. This is not contested.
The point is, however, that as a relational phenomena agency may take potentially
infinite forms in the context of an equally diverse array of relations between beings
and things in different times and spaces. This does not mean that all would be actors
have the same capacity to enrol others, nor that enrolment is a voluntary or deliberate
act.

For our purposes here in attempting to come to terms with how to incorporate
consumption withing agri-food studies, however, an arguably more important aspect
of the actor-network perspective is its approach to questions of scale and its handling
of apparently macro and micro-levels of analysis. As pointed out in Lockie and Kitto
(2000), within the wider sociological literature there are at least two broad approaches
to the dissolution of the macro-micro dichotomy that are reflected in actor-network
theory. The first argues that all social practice remains situated in time and space and
that apparently macro-level phenomena such as globalization result from the
extension of social relationships beyond face-to-face interaction (Giddens, 1984).
This is enabled by what Latour (1987) terms ‘immutable mobiles’; technologies of
telecommunication, transport and inscription that allow the capture, preservation and
transfer of knowledge and materials. The second approach argues that these
relationships are not only extended through space and time but that participants
actively construct and pursue representations of the ‘macro-social’ as they engage in
situated social practice (Knorr-Cetina, 1981). The macro is not, therefore, an
emergent property, but an achievement, of micro-social action. ‘Action at a distance’
is exerted through expanding networks through the deployment of immutable
mobiles—technologies of knowledge—that redefine the world in their own image as
they enroll new actants (Latour, 1987). Thus, according to Latour (1999), there is no
change of scale in the social domain between the micro/actor and the
macro/structural, for what appear as macro-level social phenomena are, in fact,
attempts at the ‘summing up of interactions through various kinds of devices,
inscriptions, forms and formulae, into a very local, very practical, very tiny locus’
(Latour, 1999: 17). The social does not designate:
 a Society, the Big Animal that makes sense of local interactions. Neither
does it designate an anonymous field of forces. Instead it refers to
something entirely different which is the summing up of interactions
through various kinds of devices, inscriptions forms and formulae, into a
very local, very practical, very tiny locus … Big does not mean ‘really’
big or ‘overall’, or ‘overarching’, but connected, blind, local, mediated,
related … when one explores the structures of the social, one is not led
away from the local sites … but closer to them (Latour, 1999: 17–18,
italics in original).

Examples of obvious relevance to this paper include the attempts of market

researchers to sum up ‘consumer demands’ through the assimilation, tabulation and
manipulation of survey responses and the attempts of producers, retailers and so on to
speak for ‘consumers’ on the basis of such technologies of knowledge—all localized
acts embedded in traceable networks. This does not mean that the patterns thus
identified are mere figments of the sociological imagination, but that such patterns are
the generative outcome of network interactions and not their cause (Law, 1994).

There are clear parallels here between Latour’s linking of power, knowledge and
expertise with the work of Foucault (Miller and Rose, 1990). Law (1994) makes a
more explicit link by adapting the Foucaultian notion of discourse. Law (1994)
defines discourses as ‘ordering’ sets of patterns that are performed, embodied and
told, not simply through linguistic utterances, but through potentially innumerable
materials. Such discourses are dynamic, fluid and interactive. Law argues that the task
of researchers is not to identify singular hegemonic patterns but to remain sensitive to
the presence of a plurality of discourses. Law reminds us—very usefully—that it is
not only the counting, recording and sorting of materials and knowledge that are
important in the extension of networks, but also the speaking, writing, broadcasting,
packaging, building and so on. As with other dichotomies, there are held to be no
meaningful differences between the discursive or symbolic and the material.

Rose and Miller (1992) also make these links between power, knowledge and
expertise more explicit by integrating Latour’s (1987) concept of ‘action at a distance’
with Foucault’s (1991) work on governmentality in order to explore the ways in
which the influence of ‘centers of calculation’ may be both substantial and indirect.
Government is treated here not as an institution, but as an activity, or social practice,
concerned with the ‘conduct of conduct’. Earlier work taking a governmentality
perspective was focused on the analysis of neo-liberalism; a rationality of governance
that through deregulation and the promotion of market relations has sought to
influence both the environment within which people make decisions (Miller and Rose,
1990), and the ways in which they are likely to understand and respond to that
environment (Burchell, 1993). In attempting to influence the self-calculating and self-
regulating capacities of citizens this approach to governance seeks to act on
subjectivity as much as on overt behavior (Burchell, 1993). Examples of neo-liberal
practice in the agri-food sphere range from the education of farmers in techniques of
economic calculation (Lockie, 1999) to the promulgation of discourses of self-
reliance through programs that redefine farm poverty as a ‘structural adjustment’
problem rather than as a ‘welfare’ problem (Higgins and Lockie, 2001). Far from
being a means for governments adopting ‘economic rationalist’ ideology simply to
reduce support for agriculture, such programs draw heavily on discourses of private
property rights, independence and opposition to government regulation (Lockie, 1999;
Reeve, 2001). Neo-liberalism is treated, therefore, not as an ideology obfuscating
social relationships, but as a way of doing things that renders the objects of
governance knowable and actionable. Rationalities of governance such as neo-
liberalism not only restrict and guide state actionproviding the boundaries of
acceptable state interventionbut are enacted, contested and developed through these
actions.

Just as the governmentality perspective leads us away from general theories of ‘the
state’ so it leads us away from general theories of consumption. Via a case study of
the application of psychological expertise to marketing and advertising, Miller and
Rose (1997) examine the ‘productive’ application of these techniques to the
establishment of new relationships between humans through the medium of goods.
Assembling the consumer was not, they argue, a matter of manipulation and the
creation of false needs, but of rendering consumer choice ‘intelligible in terms of a
complex and hybrid array of individualized psychological factors’ that could be
‘understood and engaged with in a calculated manner’ in order to create connections
between ‘the active choices of potential consumers and the qualities, pleasures and
satisfactions represented in the product’ (Miller and Rose, 1997: 30–31). But while
Miller and Rose clearly reject the notion that consumption is manipulated by the state
or capital in the interests of accumulation, neither do they support the opposite
polemic that consumers engage in nothing other than free and rational choice in an
open market. As Latour (1987) argues, technologies of inscription, communication
and so on (immutable mobiles) do not merely record and relay facts about the world
but play an active role in the reconfiguration of the world in their own image.
Applying a similar argument to psychological market research, Miller and Rose
(1997: 31) argue that:

This charting does not merely uncover pre-existing desires or anxieties: it

forces them into existence by new experimental situations … that enable
them to be observed, it renders them thinkable by new techniques of
calculation, classification and inscription … and hence makes them
amenable to action and instrumentalization in the service of sales of
goods.

There are perhaps subtle, but important, differences here between the centers of
calculation that the actor-network and governmentality perspectives suggest we
examine and the centers of power that approaches such as Dixon’s (1999) seek to
identify. In practice, both approaches are likely to suggest consideration of similar
actors within any production-consumption network. However, by treating power and
agency as outcomes of network relationships rather than as properties of individuals
the actor-network and governmentality perspectives shift our focus away from the
identification of the power-ful and towards the ways in which network connections
are established and maintained. By recognizing that power is potentially productive
they allow us to treat those network connections as tenuous and fluid without
confusing the enrollment of actors necessarily with their domination and control.
Further, with a perspective on the macro-social that emphasizes its embeddedness
within situated interactions and representational techniques these approaches give us a
clear starting point in attempts to come to terms with the hitherto problematic task of
incorporating consumption within holistic agri-food studies—that being the specific
practices and techniques that are deployed in order to understand and influence
consumption patterns and thus to enroll ‘consumers’ within production-consumption
networks. While, following Miller and Rose (1997), this section has focused on
technologies of knowledge including psychological market research techniques, as
these same authors point out, a range of other practices and techniques—such as the
new topographies of consumption spaces—also warrant investigation. The
mobilization of ‘organic food consumers’ that is explored in the rest of this paper is
focused primarily, therefore, on what is ‘known’ about such ‘consumers’ and the basis
and effects of this knowledge while remaining open to possibilities for alternative
practices and techniques to also be deployed.

Mobilizing the ‘organic consumer’

If there is one thing that almost everyone ‘knows’ about the organic consumer it is
that they are a yuppie. After all, organic products are generally more expensive than
their conventional counterparts, so who can afford them other than those with high
disposable incomes? It may be that these yuppies are motivated by the environmental
claims of organic production systems but—yuppies being the hedonistic people they
are—they are probably more motivated by concerns with their own health. And with
food scares galore over the last decade—from chemical residues to salmonella and
mad cow disease—who wouldn’t be? Particularly among those with children! As far a
cry as these ‘common sensical’ stereotypes may appear from the sophisticated
approaches to market research analysed by Miller and Rose (1997), they are seldom
challenged in discussions over the rapid increases in demand for certified organic
produce that have been seen over the last ten years. With growth in the overall market
for organics somewhere in the vicinity of 20–50 percent per annum the problem
facing the industry at the moment seems to be getting enough product on the shelves,
not quibbling over who might be buying it. However, quite apart from the fact that
simply labelling a product ‘organic’ is not in itself sufficient to ensure market success
(certified organic products still fail (Lyons, 1999)), a number of studies conducted in
Australia and elsewhere have shown these assumptions to be more than a little
problematic. The key question that will be addressed here is not whether the organic
industry is simply marketing itself to the wrong people (although this is an important
question) but the extent to which such knowledge contributes to the mobilization of
particular types of people as organic consumers irrespective of its spurious
foundations.

It would be tempting to interpret the lack of sophisticated knowledge that the

Australian organic industry has of those who purchase its products as a reflection of
the relatively small size of the sector compared with its ‘conventional’ counterparts.
Although this may have some truth to it, it certainly doesn’t tell the whole story. Reis
(forthcoming), for example, has found via an analysis of conventional and organic
beef production-consumption networks in Central Queensland that at almost all points
within these networks the notion of ‘consumer demand’ is accorded principal causal
status in the determination of production, processing and retailing practices. Yet at
virtually no points other than retail outlets is direct contact with, or knowledge of,
potential end-consumers either sought or achieved. It seems taken for granted that
domestic consumers ‘demand’ high quality, lean and small carcases while Asian
consumers ‘demand’ high quality, but heavier and fatter, carcases. It also seems taken
for granted that as long as produce is being sold that it must be meeting ‘consumer
demands’. There are a number of reasons why we might find this confidence in an
abstract notion of the sovereign consumer bestowing their approval on the Central
Queensland beef industry surprising. First, for the last twenty years the industry has
been beset by dramatically falling terms of trade and regular food safety scares.
Second, the quality of meat sold on the local market has been repeatedly questioned;
particularly in relation to tenderness. This is likely the result both of animal
husbandry, slaughtering, processing and storage practices and of the relatively harsh
tropical savannah production environment and the selection pressure it places on
tough, hardy animals. Third, it is arguable that the highest profile Central Queensland
producers are those who have abandoned the mass market for beef and established
their own brand labels (such as Acton’s Super Beef and Organic Beef Exporters) for
vertically integrated production, processing and retailing chains supplying beef
guaranteed according to a number of specific quality parameters.

For the vast majority of participants within both organic and beef production-
consumption networks ‘the consumer’ is, in fact, invisible. This is the logical
corollary of Fischler’s (1988) observation that the industrialization of food is
accompanied by the extension of production-consumption chains in time and space,
rendering the point of food production increasingly invisible to food consumers and
undermining traditional bases of trust. And so, just as personal networks involving co-
present relationships between farmers, butchers, consumers and so on are replaced
with bureaucratized and scientized processes of ‘quality assurance’ (Lockie, 1998), so
are they replaced with technologies for rendering ‘the consumer’ knowable and
actionable ‘at a distance’. The point is, however, that these are disjointed, incomplete
and very much contested processes.

One rather obvious way to approach to this dilemma (an approach that we have taken)
would be to conduct research with food consumers and explore with them how they
construct organic foods, their consumption patterns, and other food-related
behaviors1. But based on the argument of this paper thus far it can be seen that any
such exercise in ‘calculation, classification and inscription’ would be problematic if it
did not recognise its own role in bringing new relationships into being and
establishing new forms and objects of action (Miller and Rose, 1997)2. The
disjuncture that appears to exist between social survey results and common-sense
knowledge of who buys organic food is still worth examining, however, due to the
contribution that these competing knowledges make to the mobilisation of organic
consumers.

1
The rest of the research results reported in this paper are based on a national study of organic food
consumption in Australia. Specific methods used included a series of 13 focus group discussions with
consumers in metropolitan and regional parts of Queensland and Victoria through 2000–2001, and a
CATI (Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing) based survey of 1200 randomly selected adults in
July 2001 (see Lockie et al. 2001).
2
While this is the case with any such study due to the manner in which participants are encouraged to
reflect on existing networks, the impact of any results published and so on, this particular study was
conducted in close collaboration with the Organic Federation of Australia—a peak body representing
certification organisations, consumer interest groups, farmers, government and individual members.
This collaboration has helped to ensure widespread dissemination and discussion of results within the
Australian organic sector and media.
So who does buy organic food? According to North American studies, organic
consumers are educated, come from no particular age group and are just as likely to
be low as high income earners (Cunningham, 2001). Heavy buyers tend to be women
under 30 years of age, half of whom earn less than US$30,000 per annum
(Cunningham, 2001). This gendered aspect of organic consumption is supported by
research from Northern Ireland that found women with children to be the most
committed buyers of organic food (Davies et al. 1995). In fact, women aged 30–45
who could afford to act as ‘green consumers’ almost certainly would. While results
from different countries point to different levels of influence from to income on
organic consumption, education and gender appear to be consistently important
(Makatouni, 2001). Our own results from Australia confirm this trend (Lockie et al.
2001). There is a clear gender dimension to organic consumption with 44 percent of
women claiming to have consumed certified organic foods during the preceding 12
months compared with 34 percent of men. Education has a more dramatic impact
though with 48 percent of those with tertiary qualifications consuming organics
compared with only 28 percent of those with primary school educations. If we look at
science education, consumption of organics climbs to 50 percent for those with
tertiary science qualifications. Given the positive relationship in the general
population between education and income we would expect a relationship, therefore,
between organic consumption and income even if income is not the determining
factor. If people are split into quartiles according to income we find that while 44
percent of people within the top two quartiles consume at least some organic food,
this figure only drops to 38 percent in the next quartile and 35 percent in the bottom
quartile. These differences are certainly significant, but given the substantial price
premiums paid for organic food they are not as dramatic as might be expected.
Instead, they support Cunningham’s (2001) contention that given the implications of
environmentalism for lifestyle choices, a number of tertiary educated organic
consumers are likely to have deliberately pursued lower income career paths.

Organic consumers are not, of course, only stereotyped in relation to their income
(‘yuppies’), but also in relation to their values (‘greenies’ and ‘health nuts’). Yet when
the strength of motivation towards a number of factors that might influence food
consumption choices is compared for organic and non-organic consumers the most
obvious outcome is the very similar value profile for both groups. Organic consumers
emerge as no more or less busy, price sensitive or risk averse than anybody else.
While they do appear more motivated by concerns about the naturalness of foods,
together with their impacts on animal welfare and environment, it is important to note
that this is only a matter of degree. By buying organic food these consumers are
expressing what are, in fact, widely shared values. As Cunningham (2001: 8) states,
organic consumers ‘are no longer the stereotyped sixty’s flower child’; rather, they
are increasingly mainstream. Yet the persistence and strength of those stereotypes
among members of the organic industry is matched only by their persistence and
strength among consumers themselves. While we might expect at least some of those
who don’t purchase organics to rationalise their choices through dismissive
stereotyping of ‘others’, many people who do purchase organic food were aware of
these stereotypes and applied them to other organic consumers while resisting their
application to themselves.

It is important to reiterate that the purpose of presenting these findings is not to

demonstrate that a large number of people are misguided in their assumptions about
organic consumption. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence around to suggest that one
really would have to be a radical or a Luddite to seriously think organics a superior
purchasing option. The evidence to which I refer here are a range of alternative
discourses that have arisen in opposition to organics as its market share has increased
and which draw on their own technologies of knowledge. The governance of organic
consumption, in other words, does not draw solely on representations of ‘organic
consumers’ but on a wide range of discourses, knowledges and practices. Potential
organic consumers are confronted, for example, with discourses attacking the
environmental credibility of organic agriculture, questioning its ability to feed
growing human populations, undermining confidence in the trustworthiness of
organic certification systems, and alleging the health claims of organic food to be
misleading or false. These discourses circulate regularly through mass media
and—through the backing of scientific research organisations—interact with
discourses regarding the independent and privileged knowledge claims of science. As
transparent as these discourses may seem in their support for the vested interests of
agri-chemical and biotechnology industries, it must not be forgotten that they are
backed up by billions of dollars of investment each year in research and advisory
services (Lockie, 1999). Education would appear to play a critical role in providing
the confidence and skills for people to appraise such knowledge claims. But for the
majority of consumers (and farmers for that matter), the information before them does
not leave a clear cut case for organics. Combined with the competing imperatives,
desires and anxieties facing anybody as they make food consumption choices it is
little wonder that many people are ambivalent about the extent to which they identify
as an ‘organic consumer’.

Despite its problematic base the discourse of consumer demand constitutes an

important ‘mode of ordering’ within organic production-consumption networks.
Framed as wealthy and health conscious, the sovereign organic consumer is attracting
increasing attention from mainstream food and beverage companies (Burch et al,
2001; Coombes and Campbell, 1998; Lyons, 1999) and leading to fundamental
changes in the nature of the industry (Buck et al. 1997; Guthman, 1998; Lockie et al.
2000; Lyons, 2001). Although the subsequent industrialization of organics, and the
tension this has created over the meaning and ideological basis of ‘organics’, has been
widely documented, what has gone relatively unnoticed is the extent to which many
long-term participants in organics believe that the opening of the industry to the
corporate sector is essential if consumer demands are to be met. And further, that
rising demand must be met even if current market share is to be maintained due to the
belief that disillusionment with the ability of the sector to supply product will drive
people away. It is no great surprise that many, if not most, mainstream food
companies entering the organic sector are primarily interested in the development of
value-added processed products that attract higher premiums and profits than fresh
fruit and vegetables (Coombes and Campbell, 1998; Lyons, 1999). Although there are
a number of well-known exceptions (see Burch et al. 2001), the trend within Australia
at the present time is for mainstream supermarkets to stock an increasing range of
processed organic products and to limit sales of fresh organic fruit and vegetables to a
small number of metropolitan sites in relatively affluent neighbourhoods. It would be
very surprising indeed if the point of sale data on which supermarkets rely for so
much of their market intelligence did not point towards a relatively affluent profile for
the organic consumer since this is the group for whom availability of organic products
has actually increased with the industrialization of the sector. While we may argue,
therefore, on the basis of our research that lower income earners are no less interested
in consuming organic food than higher income earners, this situation may well change
due to the focus of so many within the industry on mobilizing the wealthy as organic
consumers.

Conclusion

The relational approach advocated in this paper drawing on actor-network and

governmentality perspectives suggests that a promising way to bring consumption
into holistic agri-food studies is through consideration of the multiple ways in which
people are mobilized as consumers within production-consumption networks. Perhaps
the central problem facing food suppliers as production-consumption networks extend
in time and space is that of opening the realm of consumption to calculation and
action. As the market for organic products continues to expand this problem is only
likely to intensify. The analysis of the Australian organic industry shows that
discourses of consumer sovereignty are widespread and carry substantial influence
through their shaping of strategies to mobilize people as organic consumers. While
there would appear to be some contradiction between existing discourses of who the
‘organic consumer’ might be and empirical survey evidence, the targeting of
marketing and products at particular groups of people is likely, in the absence of
intervention, to remould the profile of organic consumers in the shape of what
currently appears to be a misleading stereotype. It is important to remember that these
stereotypes are based on technologies of knowledge—from point of sale record
keeping to agricultural and biotechnological science—that suggest they are far from
irrational. This does not mean that it is consumers now who are disempowered and
manipulated, but it does mean that despite the much wider consumption base
identified for organics through survey techniques, some ‘demands’ are more visible
and more likely to be met than others unless alternative knowledges and projects are
brought to the fore. The relational approach advocated here suggests that it is by
understanding the ways in which such technologies of calculation, inscription and
communication are used to ‘sum up’ and act on concepts such as ‘consumer demand’
that the divide between micro and macro-sociologies may be spanned.

In staking these claims in relation to agri-food studies it is important to offer two

qualifications. First, as the analysis of organic consumption in Australia above
demonstrates, the range of discourses acting on consumption patterns is far broader
than those addressed specifically to the representation of consumer demands. While
this was illustrated with reference to discourses regarding the environmental and
health claims of organic agriculture and food, I may just as easily have focussed on
discourses around parenting, gender and so on. The examination of strategies to act on
potential consumers by other participants within any production-consumption network
may offer a useful starting point for analysis but will invariably lead us beyond these
initial boundaries. Second, there are many more potential research questions that the
actor-network and governmentality perspectives suggest for a consideration of
consumption. In contrast with Fine (1995) who argues that consumption can only be
understood in relation to ‘systems of provision’ for particular commodities, I would
argue that consumption incorporates such a diverse array of social, cultural and
economic practices that it remains a more than worthwhile focus for research in its
own right (Lockie and Kitto, 2000). Indeed, so many production-consumption
networks may be implicated in a single meal, occasion or other practice that
individual production-consumption networks become more-or-less dispensable or
interchangeable. The relational approach suggests that there is much to be gained not
only by attempting to consider production-consumption holistically, but also by
considering more carefully the embodied nature of human experience and the
opportunities such a consideration offers to examine our connections with the bodies
and objects of the non-human world. While the embodiment of human experience has
been brought into discussions regarding food consumption (see Lupton, 1996) it
remains almost entirely ignored in sociological studies of food provision (Bryant,
2001). Clearly, there remains much to be done.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my co-investigators on the Greening Foods project—Geoffrey

Lawrence, Kristen Lyons and Julie Reis—for their invaluable contribution to the
thinking behind this paper. I would also like to thank Kerry Mummery for his
assistance with data analysis and Nell Sallem, Cassandra Starr and Emma Jakku for
their extremely capable research assistance. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the
financial assistance of the Australian Research Council.

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