A cultural economy model for studying food systems

Agriculture and Human Values16: 151–160, 1999.© 1999Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

A cultural economy model for studying food systems

Jane DixonSchool of Social Science and Planning, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia

Accepted in revised form December 12, 1998

Abstract. In 1984, William Friedland proposed a Commodity Systems Analysis framework for describingthe stages through which a commodity is transformed and how it acquires value. He challenged us to think ofcommodities as entities with a social as well as a physical presence. Friedland’s argument enriched the concept ofcommodity production, but it remains essentially a supply side perspective.

Since then, many commentators have argued that power is shifting from producers to consumers. Furthermore,some are claiming that, contrary to much traditional Marxist thinking about how individuals find meaning throughtheir productive capacities, it is now through consumption that individuals are identifying themselves. Giventhe significance of this view, it seems timely to extend Friedland’s framework to incorporate the consumptionperspective.

In light of other claims that the distance between production and consumption is increasing, it is equallyimportant to acknowledge the processes that structure the relationship between the two spheres. This entails usingnew retail geographical and cultural studies to explore further what takes place in distribution and exchange.

This article describes a new model for understanding power in commodity systems, one that acknowledges theinput and interests of a range of actors beyond the agricultural sector. The proposed cultural economy model alsoemphasizes a range of value adding processes that are wider than those that apply to commodity production.

Key words: Cultural economy, Commodity systems analysis, Consumption, Distribution and exchange, Foodsystems

Jane Dixon is a senior lecturer in the School of Social Science and Planning, RMIT. She is completingher doctorate entitled, “Chooks, Cooks and Culinary Cultures: A Chicken Sociology.” The cultural economymodel described in this article was used to guide the fieldwork, which centered on the Australian poultrycommodity complex. She continues to research commodity complexes based on intensively farmed animals, andthe power of supermarkets, especially their impact on Australian rural life. Jane is currently on leave from RMITto coordinate a national collaboration on health and inequality, a part of which involves how food systemscontribute to inequalities in population health.

Introduction

With well respected social commentators and academ-ics arguing, variously, that the modern world is under-going a second food revolution (Sokolov, 1991; Mintz,1994) and that established food regimes are disin-tegrating (Friedmann and McMichael, 1989), it isappropriate that food systems and culinary dynamismare enjoying wide scrutiny. However it is difficult tofind, in times of flux, consensus about several funda-mental questions: What is the nature of the relationshipbetween the production and consumption of food? Andwhere does the balance of power lie in a commoditysystem?

The primary purpose of this article is to developan approach for analyzing how the production andconsumption of food are interrelated. It begins withan overview of three different bodies of work vying to

explain power in food systems, and argues that eachneeds to acknowledge one another’s insights to be ofuse in this endeavor. The article proceeds to describehow this could be done by adapting William Fried-land’s Commodity Systems Analysis (CSA) model. Iselected this model for two reasons: its publication in1984 has sparked robust effort and debate to explainchanging commodity and food systems (Buttel, 1996:21), and its premise that commodity systems have a“social reality” permits what has been termed a socialconstructionist approach.1 This approach demands anactor-orientation and is context and case specific, andas such is most amenable to “letting in” consumers andothers responsible for the commodity’s “social life.”2

The adaptation of the CSA is guided by the ideathat economic judgments are “culturally determinedand institutionalized in society” (Arce and Marsden,1993: 298). Indeed, the adaptation of the model is so

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infused by an acceptance of the inseparability betweencultural and economic processes, that I have called ita cultural economy model. The article concludes withfurther principles and benefits of the adapted model.

Power in commodity and food systems

In the last decade, three bodies of work have emergedto explain power in contemporary food systems. Thefirst, the “new political economy,”3 stresses the import-ance of transnational agri-food producers for align-ing production and consumption at both national andglobal levels. Although thisfield encompasses a spec-trum of analytic frameworks and theories — commod-ity systems (Friedland, 1984), commodity chains(Gereffi and Korzeniewicz, 1994), global restructuringof commodity complexes (Bonanno et al., 1994), andregimes of accumulation (Friedmann and McMichael,1989) – it finds some unity through focusing on corpor-ate food producers, as well as various agriculture-staterelations.

Within this body of work, the food regimes theorystands alone as directly acknowledging consumers. Forexample, in her work analyzing family wheat farmsand the gendered division of labor, Friedmann arguesthat each “regime of accumulation” is accompaniedby distinctive norms of consumption. “These normsrefer not only to how much people use . . . but also howthey acquire goods, especially the extent and charac-ter of market dependence” (Friedmann, 1990: 197).Echoing the Australian food historian Michael Symons(1982), Friedmann highlights the significance of thecreation of “Mrs. Consumer” two generations ago tothe commoditization both of domestic relations and ofthe food system.

The concept of norms of consumption whenused within the context of regimes of accumulation,however, presents consumption as so intertwined witheach production regime that little room remains forconflict between producers and consumers. Moreover,in Arce and Marsden’s opinion (1993), much of what Iam terming the “new political economy” is constrainedby its focus on what happens within the agriculturalsector.

To obtain insights into food consumption one goesto the “sociology of consumption.” This field’s emer-gence is based on the premise that consumption cannotbe reduced to the logic of production systems (Miller,1995; Edgell et al., 1996; Gabriel and Lang, 1995).Instead, consumption replaces work as the primaryintersection of individual and collective behaviors andidentities (Lash and Urry, 1994; Zukin, 1991; Bauman,1992). In a self-styled polemic, Miller describes theFirst World housewife as exerting more power than

the IMF and national governments. “She” achievesthis through the pursuit of two objectives: thrift andthe moral economy of the home, and “she” votes outgovernments if constrained in achieving her objectives(Miller, 1995).

Miller positions aggregate consumers as exercisingeconomic and political power in what are generallyconsidered mundane behaviors, including shoppingand family food provisioning. This, it seems, is noth-ing new. In E. P. Thompson’s review of the concept ofthe moral economy, women’s centuries old acceptanceof “responsibility of preserving life” through providingfood is persuasively drawn (Thompson, 1991: 332).

Evidence of changing and unpredictable food prac-tices, and not simply commodity choices, has promp-ted others to proselytize for the power of consumers infood systems. An Australian historian of supermarketshas noted that consumption is portrayed in a sizablevolume of work

as a potential arena of personal empowerment,cultural subversion, and even political resistance.Here, the “consumer” is seen, not as a passiveagent – someone whose identity is constructed bythe ideologies of Western consumerism – but asactive, as a “producer” of usages and meanings thatthe marketplace may not have “given” a particularcommodity and that potentially undermine or evadeconsumerist ideologies . . . (Humphery,1995: 8–9)4

In one such account, Australian consumers whoeat outside the home are posited as subverting civil-izing processes. In a phenomenological account of“dining out,” Joanne Finkelstein argues that eatingout is particularly significant for women. They can beseen in public and they can imbibe, as men have forcenturies, the “spectacle and experience” offered bybars, cafes, and streets. Moreover, the “restaurant isa welcome architecture of human commerce becausewe are obliged only to performde rigeur, thus we arerelieved of the responsibility to shape society” (Finkel-stein, 1989: 5). In this way dining out becomes “asource of incivility.”

Finkelstein’s claims about women beingempowered through changed eating practices,like other cultural theorists’ claims of consumersovereignty, can be criticized for their grossgeneralizations about production and consumption,and about the life-worlds of men and of women.They appear to continue the social science tradition ofcreating arguments on the basis of binary oppositions.This tradition is especially manifest in theories oflabor. Indeed, the assumptions that have been madeabout both what constitutes work and who does ithas consistently obscured how food systems operate

A CULTURAL ECONOMY MODEL FOR STUDYING FOOD SYSTEMS 153

Table 1. Competing accounts of power

Production Consumption

economy culture

structure action

wage relation commodity relation

instrumental body subjective body

cognitive rationality intersubjectivity; desiresupply/resources/availability demand/needs/acceptability

public realm: workplace/state private realm: household/family

exchange value use value

men women

and are reproduced. Nona Glazer (1990: 145), forexample, has noted in relation to her study of the shiftfrom household to commodified food provisioning:

Dualistic thinking about work seems to follow fromobservations of a particular historical process – thechange from work for subsistence, concentratedin the household, to the emergence of a marketeconomy where waged labor became critical to thesurvival of the working class. The analysis of theseparation of much paid work from the householdand the development of the marketplace as centralto capitalism brings with it a whole set of categoriesreflecting an either/or view of work: exchange valuevs. use value; productive vs. nonproductive labor;market vs. non-market work; the public realm ofwork outside the family vs. the private realm of thefamily. Each pair reinforces the view that there is asharp boundary between the economy and the work-place on the one side, and the household economyand the family on the other.

The two bodies of work described thus far are builton assumptions that can be depicted in Table 1.

The binary divide continues to obscure the natureof the mechanisms articulating and mediating produc-tion and consumption. The new political economy’sthesis that the primary mechanism is commodifica-tion in tandem with capital accumulation, overwhelmsdebate with an argument of the uni-directional natureof change. Claims of consumer authority and thepower of housewives to shape production processescontained in the sociology of consumption appearequally one-sided.

The two fields do agree, however, with theproposition that the distance between producers andconsumers is growing (Marsden and Little, 1990; Fisc-hler, 1988). Over the last few years economic andretail geographers have been busy examining the roleof those responsible for simultaneously lengthening

the food chain, and for mediating the relationshipbetween producers and consumers. Their efforts pointto the emergence of a new social actor: the produ-cer/distributor. In Australian research, global fast foodcorporations and supermarkets, rather than consumers,are revealed to be behind many new food products andproduction system innovations (Parsons, 1996; Burchand Pritchard, 1996). This research shows these partic-ular actors to be increasingly mediating the producer-consumer relation: a proposal that lies behind one ofthe most sustained treatments of what is being calledthe “new retail geography” (Wrigley and Lowe, 1996).

As a result of the “potentially abrasive” relation-ship between producers and retailers, academics areexamining the shifting balance of power betweenproducers and consumers through a retail-restructuringlens. Within this context, a separate form of commer-cial capital, retail capital, has been identified. Accord-ing to Ducatel and Blomley, retail capital has its ownlogic, which is “the accumulation of capital throughengaging in repeated acts of exchange” (Ducatel andBlomley, 1990: 216). The types of capital separate dueto the fact that production-oriented capital competeswith retail capital for as much of the available surplusvalue as possible.

The architects of this concept suggest that it isnot simply the distinctive logic of retail capital that isimportant, but it is the way in which it is concentrated.They argue that “the concentration of retail capital inrecent years has swung the balance of power in favourof large retail capital to such an extent that majorretail firms are strong arbiters of the terrains of produc-tion, work and consumption” (Ducatel and Blomley,1990: 224). Ducatel and Blomley use Bourdieu’snotion of the retailer-consumer interface to advancetheir argument about the power of retailers. It is

. . . neither the simple effect of production imposingitself on consumption nor the effect of a consciousendeavour to serve the consumer’s need, but theresult of the objective orchestration of two inde-pendent logics, that of the fields of production andconsumption . . . the tastes actually realized dependon the system of goods offered; every change inthe system of goods induces a change in tastes. Butconversely, every change in tastes . . . will tend toinduce. . . a transformation of the field of production(quoted in Ducatel and Blomley, 1990: 216).

In my opinion, the significance of Bourdieu’s pointis to indicate that the retailer-consumer interface istwo-way. Humphery, who was quoted earlier, pointsout that retailing operations are partly a creation ofretailers, but equally result from consumers reflectingupon advertising, the mass media, and what are calledidentity constitutive practices.5

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Central to the process of commodity exchange isthe process of communicating the value of commod-ities to a species, which deals in representations – incategorizing social reality symbolically and conceptu-ally. Both the French social scientist Claude Fischler(1988) and Sidney Mintz adopt the concept of humansas consumers of representations. Mintz has arguedthat because food is burdened with a symbolic load,research needs to adopt a dual emphasis upon theinside and outside meaning of food. This involvesresearchers decoding “the codifiers” who are respons-ible for giving foods their nutritional, economic,and cultural meanings (Mintz, 1994: 114–115). AsFantasia has highlighted in his study of the fast foodphenomenon in France:

There is a vantage point situated at the intersectionof economic and cultural sociology from which wecan discern ever more clearly the material dimen-sions of culture and the non-material dimensions ofgoods. From this increasingly busy intersection, arecent focus on the consumption process has drawnattention to, among other things, the ways thatconsumption is mediated by the images, ideologies,the desires, the “texts” that are inscribed withinthem, so that the consumer often consumes more (orless) than he or she bargained for (Fantasia, 1995:201).

The process of representation in respect of foodinvolves a sizable complex of “codifiers.” Packard’s(1957) “hidden persuaders,” or corporate advertisers,have been joined by open persuaders in the guise ofsocial experts, including nutrition and allied scient-ists. The latter’s role in shaping food demand and ofbeing coopted by food producers is well documented(Levenstein, 1993; Nestle, 1993; Belasco, 1989).The codifiers’ combined knowledge of consumer fears,prejudices, desires, and behaviors is immense (Tanseyand Worsley, 1995: chs. 7 & 8).

In summary, at least three fields are competing toexplain power in the food system. This raises a ques-tion as to whether we need some sort of synthesisfor studying the production-consumption interrelation-ship. I argue that we do, given that the new polit-ical economy accounts stop before they arrive at theconsumer, that consumption sociology takes the sphereof production for granted, and that the new retailgeography is captivated by the influence of retailcapital and retail restructuring.

Infusing commodity systems analysis with culturaleconomy

In 1984, William Friedland proposed what he calledthe Commodity Systems Analysis (CSA) framework

for describing the stages through which a commodityis transformed and acquires value. He gave commod-ities a social life by reminding us that people’slabor and ideas, their technological developments, thepower circulating between groups, the way individu-als cooperate and their organizational structures are allcritical “inputs.”

CSA was based on the recognition that agriculturehad shifted from mixed farming and self-consumptionto farming single commodities and market basedconsumption. The model brought neo-marxist, agri-cultural, and industrial sociology insights to bearon the consequential problems being experienced byfamily farms, rural communities, and agriculturallabor.

The schema was developed on the basis of a num-ber of agri-food commodity case studies conductedfrom the mid-seventies onwards in California, andprovided an analytic process “to recognize when andwhere interpenetration of systems occur, where thesystem being analyzed touches upon other systems oris significantly affected by others” (Friedland, 1984:223). It allowed for the disciplined organization of amass of data and as a result lent itself to comparativeanalyses of commodities. Its construction encouragedanalysis of the shifting balance of power betweenactors and processes, albeit confined to productionsphere activities. Indeed its clarity of purpose makesit ideal for adaptation.

Augmenting production

According to Friedland’s 1984 version, all commod-ities were said to be the outcome of the followingprocesses:

• production practices: which include produc-tion techniques, commodity characteristics likediseases, etc., production cycles, and associatedproblems;• grower organization and organizations: farmers

or growers are acknowledged as the basis of agri-culture in this model – how they use their labor,whether they manage others’ labor, how theyorganize, and how their organizations relate toothers relevant to the commodity;• labor as a factor of production: which includes the

labor process, the institutionalization of employ-ment practices, the presence and activities ofunions;• science production and application: which

involves scrutiny of the knowledge base behindthe productive activity, the links between R&Dunits and grower’s groups, funding sources, andthe degree of public sector involvement;


• marketing and distribution networks: this invo-lves the marketing of commodities, and pricesetting arrangements where applicable for somecommodities.

Friedland talked about the need for the model to beconstantly refined. Guided by those who emphasizethe regulatory specifics of commodity relationships,especially Friedmann and McMichael (1989), it seemsnecessary to add a “regulatory politics” process tothe production sphere, the focus being state-producerrelationships.6 Given how much even fresh productsare combined with other ingredients and are packagedit appears worthwhile to include a post-harvest processcalled the “product design process.”7 as distinct fromscience production, which occurs pre-harvest andduring growth.

Detailing distribution and exchange

While Marx argued against the artificial separationof the spheres comprising the political economy, hedid ascribe to each specific properties. He referredto distribution activities as “special” as distinct fromproduction, which is “generalizable.” Marx inTheGrundrisseelaborated: “Distribution determines whatproportion (quantity) of the products the individual isto receive; exchange determines the products in whichthe individual desires to receive his share allotted tohim by distribution” (McLellan, 1973: 32–33).

Despite Friedland (1984: 226) pointing out that“the distribution process is such that the prime produ-cer is effectively captive of an organization . . . atanother level of the marketing system,” he did notelaborate on the processes, actors, or dynamics, as Iam proposing. This step in the model’s evolution isjustified due to the growing evidence from the newretail geography and cultural studies that particularprocesses and institutions are mediating the producer-consumer relationship. It seems timely to identifywhich social actors are playing a major role in influen-cing which commodities are perceived to be acceptableand which are available.

Distribution and exchange sphere activities arefundamental to food’s accessibility: both metaphoric-ally and physically. This is especially so in a systemdominated by market exchange, as opposed to onewhere production for self-consumption was the norm.It is possible to surmise that culture is increasinglybeing put into the service of economics within thissphere.

The stand-alone set of processes and agents withindistribution and exchange should comprise at least thefollowing:

• marketing and distribution networks: as Fried-land has described, but placed here to capture theincreasing horizontal integration between produ-cers and distributors through supplier contracts,just-in-time distributive processes, and cooperat-ive trading between producers and wholesalers;• retailing practices and organization: requires

understanding of the role of retail capital anda mapping of the peak retailer bodies and theirinfluence on policy, large retailers’ use of psycho-graphic and similar consumer research to positiongoods and services in the marketplace, and thechanging relationship between mass and nicheretailers;• food service practices: acknowledges the special

and growing function of ready-to-eat foodsupplied by caterers and institutional food outlets(e.g., workplace and school canteens, restaurantsand fast-food outlets);• labor as a factor of distribution: includes those

paid to move food from the farm gate to theprocessor, market/warehouse and retailer, as wellas those working in retailing and food service.It also involves accounting for the unpaid laborof getting food into the household, and the foodhandling prior to consumption;• food knowledge and discourse production:

acknowledges the actors and activities thatcomprise diets-making activities: governmentemployees and academics who propose dietaryguidelines, food journalists and gastronomes,corporate advertising and corporate lobbyists,nutrition science research, and food and winefestivals and cookbooks. It also extends to foodand animal welfare activism;• regulatory politics: both government policies and

inaction require scrutiny, especially in areas ofland use planning and retail sites, shopping hourslaws, labor market regulations, and advertisingcodes, health claims legislation and consumerprotection.

Adding consumption

Friedland’s CSA model did not enter the world ofthe consumer.8 However, the omission is consistentwith much political economy that assumes the Marxistdictum that production is consumption and vice versa,and focuses on that part of the equation governed bythe wage relation.

This view has not stopped others from attempt-ing to distinguish production from consumption withinmarket economies, and to analyze what fuels such

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activity. Rather than commodity fetishism or mater-ial need, consumption is being explained to be theresult of psycho-social practices, such as desire, statusand distinction, acquisition of cultural capital, or iden-tity values (Falk, 1994; Bourdieu, 1984; Gregory andAltman, 1989; Bauman, 1992).

Two English academics whose work is inspiredby Marxism, Ben Fine (Fine and Leopold, 1993;Fine, 1994; Fine et al., 1996) and Alan Warde (1992,1994, 1997) provide sustained rationales for why itis important to study consumption separate from, butmutually constitutive of, production. Like Friedland,they assume that each commodity is unique. Wherethey depart from Friedland is to emphasize changes inthe mode of production from household to market, andfrom reciprocity to market exchange. Their systemsof provision models allow greater agency on behalfof individuals than do productivist accounts, whilstmaking this agency contingent on a range of factors.Of the two accounts, Warde’s is the neater. He arguesthat every consumption “episode” consists of a numberof “distinct facets”: the process of production or provi-sion; the conditions of access; the manner of delivery;and the environment or experience of enjoyment.

The clarity of these consumption processes is inkeeping with the clarity of Friedland’s productionprocesses, but one major problem exists in bringingtogether the two frameworks. Warde’s schema incor-porates a range of producers – primary producers,secondary (the manufacturer or processor), and tertiary(the meal preparer). By doing this, I believe that hisapproach elides the producer/consumer in a way thathides insights into the changing relationship betweenproducers and consumers.

In my opinion, Warde’s last “facet” requires teasingout too – it is at one and the same time the setting forthe consumption episode and the resulting experience.It is more helpful to distinguish between the two, andindeed Warde goes on to a lengthy discussion of theexperience of consuming, and links this to the matterof identity values.

In spite of these misgivings, I have adapted Warde’sschema to explicate the steps involved in consump-tion. Accordingly, consumption may be conceived ashaving the following components:

• the process of production, which refers to whodoes the preparing: the food service outlet, ahousehold member, a workplace canteen or afriend;• each of these modes is accompanied by differ-

ent means of access: “market exchange, familialobligation, citizenship right and reciprocity”(Warde, 1994: 19);

• differentdelivery dimensionswill be present, fromhelp-yourself to being served;• the eating environmentor context, which refers

not only to place and time but to social considera-tions, such as public or private eating, convivial orsolitary eating;• the experiencewhich involves the emotions

accompanying what is consumed, ranging frompleasure to ambivalence to disgust, as well as judg-ments on the role of the experience in identitymatters.

On the last matter, it is clear that for some, theexperience of food is greatly affected by others’ exper-ience: do they like it? and, do they approve? Thefood sociology accounts that incorporate a genderperspective are instructive here (Charles and Kerr,1988; Murcott, 1982).

A cultural economy approach

Given the proposition that the economy is increas-ingly culturally inflected whilst culture is economic-ally inflected more than in the past (Lash and Urry,1994: 64; Waters, 1995: 95; Frow, 1995: 1), itseems timely to augment political economy accountswith ones that have an explicit appreciation of culturalconcerns. Anthropologists have long used culturaleconomy as a unit of analysis, and we are familiarwith their case studies of reciprocity-based exchange,householding, and gift relationships. They under-stand, too, market exchange as a cultural phenomenon.According to Halperin the “term ‘cultural econom-ies’ refers to an analytical perspective which examineseconomies as they are embedded in and constructedby cultural systems that are larger and more power-ful than particular individuals and particular historicalmoments” (Halperin, 1994: 17). The focus is uponthe cultural construction of economic processes andpatterns.

Reflecting the work of Karl Polanyi, whose ideasare enjoying new influence in the twin fields of polit-ical economy and economic anthropology, Halperinidentifies four forms of economic integration: reci-procity, redistribution, householding, and marketexchange (Halperin, 1994: 145–149). Each is distin-guished by specific integrative mechanisms: respect-ively, symmetrical flows, center to periphery flows,circular flows and random movements. Halperin notesthat Polanyi was keen to develop a model for chart-ing the cultural and political systems that operated atparticular times and places to organize the allocationof productive resources.


Michael Watts has used the term “a culturaleconomy of the food system” to encourage attempts“to identify the distinctive spatial, natural, personaland social production conditions which help shapethe matrix of accumulation within the food system”(Watts, 1994: 568). In this way “the cultural economy”operates as a conceptual strategy just as politicaleconomy has done for over a century, but it mayoperate as a conceptual entity capable of addressingthe social organization of this last part of the twenti-eth century.9 A cultural economy approach does notreplace political economy but as Watts has hinted “aunified cultural politics, cultural economy and politicaleconomy” could illuminate the intersection of verticaland horizontal dimensions of the food system (Watts,1994: 569). The concept acknowledges what is toooften overlooked by political economy.

Not only is the cultural construction of meaningand symbols inherently a matter of political andeconomic interests but the reverse also holds –the concerns of political economy are inherentlyconflicts over meanings and symbols (Marcus andFisher, quoted in Gregory and Altman, 1989: 37).

If political economy focuses on the interrelationshipbetween the economy, social class, and politics, acultural economy perspective adopts the key interrela-tionship as that between the economy, social identity,and politics. Social identity is arguably the 1990ssuccessor to Weber’s concept of social status, but istinged with greater individual agency and fluidity.

Table 1 showed the wage relation as pivotal toproduction and the commodity relation as central toconsumption. Despite the renewed interest in distri-bution and exchange, the defining relation of thesespheres of activity remains unresolved. Arguably,the major actors in food distribution are engaged inconstructing regimes of value in which exchange takesplace. Appaduria defined a regime of value as “a broadset of agreements concerning what is desirable, whata reasonable “exchange of sacrifices” comprises, andwho is permitted to exercise what kind of effectivedemand in what circumstances” (Appadurai, 1986:57). This establishment of the context in whichcommodities circulate requires a certain legitimacy, orauthority status. Abercrombie has argued that relationsof authority shift as production is oriented to consumerpreferences. Competition between producers may leadto consumer empowerment, but as commodificationconsolidates the balance of power swings back toproducers (Abercrombie, 1994: 56). In other words,the “flow of authority” is best portrayed as cyclical.Patterns of authority would appear to be a signific-ant constraint to social action, and the fashioning ofsuch patterns a significant cultural economy process

emanating from the codifiers referred to by Mintz. Itis on this basis that I would suggest that the author-ity relation is the defining relation in distribution andexchange.

Principles and benefits of the adapted CSA

From the arguments contained in the sociology ofconsumption, new retail geography and cultural stud-ies, I believe that a cultural economy approachimproves on political economy models for analyzingcommodity and food systems. The adapted CSA

• brings alive the social reality of commoditiesthrough questioning how retailers and consumersconstruct value as much as describing how produ-cers produce value;• assumes that assigning price is only one part of the

valuation process, and it acknowledges Arce andMarsden’s point that:

In the “adding value” process, food products gothrough a complex and diverse set of reconstit-uting processes organised at the local and globalscale. Land based value represents a minor partof the total value of the product in economicterms, while in social terms a large proportion ofsymbolic and constructed value is added at theprocessing, distribution and retail stages (Arceand Marsden, 1993: 293–294);

• acknowledges productive units like families,households, and communities in addition to indi-viduals and firms, which dominate many contem-porary agri-food accounts. The history of mostAustralian commodities show the centrality offamily units across the system: not only familyfarmers, but family processors, family feed suppli-ers, and family owned and run food shops andrestaurants. Their inclusion is especially import-ant considering that the value of meals producedin Australian homes is estimated to exceed thevalue of goods produced in all of the country’smanufacturing industries (Ironmonger, 1989: 48);• expands our understanding about what constitutes

output. Consideration can be given to the manu-facture of diets; the evolution of the nutritionscience industry; the forging of new authority rela-tions as the traditional authority of the family cookdiminishes;• invites us to examine the exchanges that may be

occurring beyond market exchange. Not only domoney and the food or meal change hands, but sodo time, pride, information, guilt, and interper-sonal power. Reciprocal food exchanges remain

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relevant within subcultures, and householding isstill central to many families. Indeed some foodprocessors have identified these forms of exchangeas a point of resistance to their products;• enlarges the sphere of distribution beyond the

movement of products between producers andconsumers, most commonly equated with thetransport and placement of goods ready forconsumption. While many food system modelsacknowledge the importance of different points ofsale – such as caterers, corner shops, fast foodoutlets, supermarkets – within distribution, theydo not as a rule include the trade in representationsand the processes of transferring symbolic value;• highlights women’s roles across the food system.

Liberal and Marxist – based food systems modelsdo not include home-based food production,because no monetary transaction takes place.This approach is consistent with the omissionfrom most national account figures of women’sdomestic labor, including food processing anddistribution, and of men’s household labor, e.g.,gardening and home maintenance. As Waring(1988) puts it, these activities are outside the“productive boundary” and as such “count fornothing.” Seccombe has similarly highlightedthat from a point of production perspective, thehousehold constitutes a “hidden abode” preventingawareness of “the (centuries old) decline of vari-ous forms of commodity production in and aroundthe household” (Seccombe, 1986: 56). This omis-sion renders invisible one of the most profoundshifts within the post-Second World War foodsystem: the increasing replacement of householdproduced goods by industrially produced foods.

Conclusion

In this article, I am arguing that a cultural economymodel for analyzing food systems improves on tradi-tional commodity systems analysis, with its emphasison the supply side. The proposed model incorporatespublic and private sites of production, paid and unpaidwork, and exchange mechanisms beyond the market.One important consequence is to foreground women’schanging role in food systems.

It is difficult for any approach to span the publicand the private spheres and marketized and self-productive activities, because this means acknow-ledging a host of social actors. For practical reas-ons alone it would be easier to accept Marx’s argu-ment that researchers not disaggregate the politicaleconomy because that is not how life is experi-enced (McLellan, 1973: 33). However, whilst many

family cooks simultaneously experience being produ-cer/consumer/distributor, I would argue that there issufficient evidence to show that the identity of theconsumer is currently quite specific and distinct fromthat of producer. I do not go as far as some, however,who suggest that “the consumer has displaced theproducer at the center of social engagement” (Miller,1993: 47–48). Instead it is necessary to acknowledgethat production and consumption are shaped by thesystem of provision as a whole.

Adopting this reasoning throws the spotlight ontothe production and organization of consumption. Howfoods come to be esteemed implicates social actorswhose job is to “shape the mouth of the community.”For this reason I have argued that distribution andconsumption should be acknowledged as spheresdistinguishable from production. The model posits asemi-autonomous sphere of distribution and exchangein which patterns of authority, regimes of value, andconsumer negotiation of taste, broadly understood,take place.

The headings of the proposed model can besummarized as:

Production Processes

• production processes – public and self provi-sioning• grower organization & organizations• labor as a factor of production – paid and

unpaid• science production and application• product design process• regulatory politics

Distribution and Exchange Processes

• marketing and distribution networks• retailing practices & organization• food service practices• labor as a factor of distribution – paid and

unpaid• food knowledge & discourse production &

application• regulatory politics

Consumption Processes

• tertiary production• conditions of access• manner of delivery• the environment or context• the experience.

By extending the data collection into consumption,the very clarity that is so prominent in Friedland’sCSA model is diminished. Nevertheless, the elongatedCSA can help to determine where the balance of power


between production and consumption lies. Further-more, it shows that social identities apart from thosegained through the division of labor are increasinglyimportant to the politics of food systems.

I am particularly confident that food systemsmodels that emphasize a social actor perspective,a social life of commodities approach, and chan-ging cultural practices can reveal the shifts in powerthat shape food and commodity systems. A culturaleconomy infused CSA has the potential for reveal-ing what the political economy emphasis has thus farneglected.

Acknowledgments

I am most grateful to Pavla Miller, Rob Watts, andJanne Skinner for their comments on an earlier draftof this paper. I also thank Professor Friedland andProfessor Warde for their very useful remarks, and tothe editors of this special issue for their encouragementand assistance.

Notes

1. This approach has been most consistently applied by theso-called Wageningen School. See Buttel 1996. Arce andMarsden’s 1993 article is also representative.

2. A term used by Appadurai (1986) and elaborated by Arceand Marsden(1993).

3. As represented by the new rural sociology of the 1980sand the ‘global agri-food restructuring’ perspectives of the1990s. This distinction is described by Buttel (1996).

4. Humphery’s PhD has since been published as Humphery, K(1998) Shelf Life. Supermarkets and the Changing Culturesof Consumption, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

5. Warde (1992) suggests that one can achieve identity valuesthrough one of three processes: differentiation from othersand social bonding (a horizontal process), distinction(involving vertical hierarchy and status relationships) andnarcissism (relating to yourself). In more recent work,Warde(1997) cautions against inflating the power of indi-vidual identity formation, arguing that social identitygained through social membership is deep rooted in relationto food.

6. Since writing this paper I am aware that in Friedland’spaper “Reprise on Commodity Systems Methodology” hehas added three “research foci”, including “sectoral organ-ization” to include state sector regulation of the commod-ity. Paper delivered to Toronto Rural Sociology meeting,August, 1997.

7. This step arises from my application of the adapted CSA tothe Australian chicken meat commodity system. Processorsand supermarkets go to considerable lengths designingsauces and sprinkles etc and packaging to add to theprocessed chicken pieces.

8. Friedland now may be tending in this direction. One ofhis additional research foci is the “commodity culture”,referring to cultural forms found either among commodityproducers or consumers (Friedland 1997).

9. Waters (1995) uses it in this way when he argues that sociallife has been characterized by three phases since the 1600s:a capitalist economy, a political economy and the mostrecent cultural economy. These phases are based on a shiftfrom material through power to symbolic relationships.

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Address for correspondence:Jane Dixon, NCEPH, AustralianNational University, Canberra 0200, AustraliaPhone/fax: 61-2-6282 0055E-mail: [email protected]

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A cultural economy model for studying food systems