Status, taste and distinction in consumer culture: acknowledging the symbolic dimensions of inequality

The relationship between social position and health has been the focus of extensive public health debate. In the UK and elsewhere, most researchers have focused on physical aspects of health, using indicators such as mortality and morbidity to draw a picture of profound and widening social inequalities. This paper draws attention to the (neglected) influence of contemporary culture on wellbeing, arguing that the social meanings created within consumer culture possess symbolic force that can add to wider inequalities. The possession of greater material and cultural resources by people of higher social status enables them to label their preferred forms of consumption and lifestyle as desirable and legitimate, thus conveying messages about superior taste and social distinction. Symbolic rather than material forms of inequality are implicated here, with consequences for the psychological wellbeing of disadvantaged people. This paper argues that analyses of inequality need broadening to include such considerations. However, there are implications for efforts to address health inequalities because this analysis suggests that if some forms of social inequality are removed, elements within society would be motivated to invent new forms to replace them. Therefore, this article suggests processes whereby people can develop the self-awareness needed to resist the glossy illusions of the good life represented by modern consumer capitalism

Rapporteur’s comments on four sessions about ‘Food Matters’

Final Published versio

Colonial Legacies, Postcolonial Biologies: Gender and the Promises of Biotechnology

Three decades of work in the feminist studies of science and technology have shaped our evolving understandings of the relationships between sex, gender, and biotechnology. Sex, and gender are most often reduced to binary categories, severely limiting our conceptions not only of human diversity, but those of science and technology. Using two case study set in India, transnational surrogacy and the Indian Genome Variation Project, this paper explores how popular positions around biotechnology are reduced to binary positions promoting and opposing biotechnology as the solution for the economic and social development of India. By locating surrogacy and genomics within the larger geopolitical, historical, economic and cultural transformations of postcolonial India, the paper argues that both technologies are far more complex in their impact on women and gender. Why does technology become the major site of hope for the future? Why does genomics become the site for the promises of good health? Why has India become a site for reproductive tourism, and transnational surrogacy in particular? Drawing on the social studies of science, the paper argues that technology and human bodies are never neutral but always prefigured with a gender, race, caste and sexuality. Surrogacy and genomics should be understood within these colonial and postcolonial histories of science and technology

Commercialisation, Commodification And Gender Relations In Post Harvest Systems For Rice In South Asia

When the output of a product that has been the basis of subsistence and social reproduction - as rice has been in Asia - expands, the marketed surplus rises disproportionately to the growth rate of production. Post harvest activities that were part and parcel of the reproductive activity of household labour (in the hands and under the feet of women - even if under the control of men) then also become commercialised. Firms expand in number and labour markets sprout up as firms become differentiated in size, scale and activity. Food security comes to depend not only on the market but also on the social and political structures in which markets are embedded. One of these social structures is gender. Two aspects of this gendered process are explored in this essay. The first is 'productive deprivation' which was argued by Ester Boserup to be the most notable impact of development on women. Using field evidence comparatively from four regions of South Asia from the 1970s to the present, the impact of the waves of technological change accompanying concentration and differentiation in rice markets is shown to be strongly net labour displacing and strongly biased against female labour. Nevertheless productive deprivation is class specific and masculinisation still co-exists with a high general level of female economic participation. To start to explain why productive deprivation is class specific the essay offers a development of Ursula Huws' theory of commodification and its impact on women in advanced capitalist conditions - elaborating it for conditions of mass poverty. Poverty is shown to limit the relevance of this gendered theory. Poverty is also an important reason for the persistence of petty commodity production and trade and petty service provision. Under petty production women are either self employed or unwaged family workers for men who are themselves not fully independent but frequently dependent on money advances from commercial capital. Evidence from West Bengal in the 1990s - where the growth of rice production has eased up - shows by contrast that the process of commodification has not eased up at all. Products, by-products, intermediate and investment goods, waste, public goods, state regulative resources and labour are all relentlessly commodified. The process creates livelihoods mainly for young, low caste men. Low caste women dominate itinerant retailing, directly dependent on money advances from male wholesalers. Women are being displaced from the rice mill labour forces in which economies of scale are pitched against unwaged work in petty production. The subordinated status and double work burden of women in petty production is well known, as is their economic dependence and social insecurity. (rice - masculinisation - commodification - comparative regional analysis - comparative institutional analysis).

Retelling an Old Wife’s Tale: Postpartum Care of Taiwanese and Chinese Immigrant Women

The focus of this dissertation is the Chinese postpartum tradition zuoyuezi, often translated into English as doing-the-month. Having its roots in ancient China, this set of practices has maintained its salience today in Taiwan, China, and among first generation immigrant women in the U.S. Women not only continue to perform zuoyuezi at home, many also rely on emerging forms of commodified care. While immigrant women’s postpartum wellbeing and care has been the focus of scholarly research in health related fields, studies in the social sciences addressing immigrant women’s postpartum practices and the care relations engendered remain scant. In this qualitative project, I consider zuoyuezi as a cultural model of care, where women interact with caregivers and discourses surrounding the postpartum body, health, gender, and family. Drawing on qualitative interviews with twenty-seven class-privileged women with experience doing the month and two care workers, as well as discourse analysis of popular zuoyuezi advice books, this dissertation aims to evaluate the social cost and benefits of zuoyuezi. I trace the contour of expert knowledge on zuoyuezi, and explore the factors that influence immigrant women’s understanding of zuoyuezi norms. I also discuss the ways in which women forge care relations with various caregivers, be they family members or paid care workers, as they negotiate domains of power relations in family and commodified care. I argue that zuoyuezi is no longer a tradition with antiquated prescriptions and proscriptions. Women in fact draw on zuoyuezi norms to manage perceived health risks as constructed by popular expert discourses, to maintain the consistency of one’s positions within the family, and to respond to social and embodied contingencies that arise in their postpartum period. I also demonstrate that zuoyuezi as a model of care is situated in a field of tensions where discourses surrounding the practices increasingly find legitimacy through espousing dominant scientific knowledge and the languages of consumerism; where filial norms continue to present struggles in the formation of intergenerational care relations; and where commodification produces precarity of care and hidden cost for the workers. Considerations to address these tensions are discussed

From Christian Spirituality To Eco-Friendliness

Spirituality connotes praxis informed by religious or faith convictions. This can transform the individual and society at large. Christian spirituality is centered on how a person’s relationship with the God of Jesus Christ informs and directs one’s approach to existence and engagement with the world. The ecosystem concerns humanity and relationship with it is invariably influenced by faith or religious informed praxis. The reality of climate change is convincing many people that humankind’s common homeland needs to be treated with care and respect if created beings are to have a congenial habitat now and in the future. This article avers that Christian spirituality can contribute to eco-friendly behavior through re-formation of the behavior of people and emboldening their goodwill as regards the responsibility of all towards the care of the earth. Finally, this research proffers a three-fold model of eco-spirituality - scriptural, selfcontrol, and sacramental approaches to the earth – as a contribution towards stemming the tide of ecological assaults on creation. Textual analysis is the method used in this research

Education for the sustainable global citizen:what can we learn from Stoic philosophy and Freirean environmental pedagogies?

In support of sustainable development, the United Nations launched its Global Education First Initiative with the aims of accelerating progress towards universal access to education and good quality learning whilst fostering global citizenship. This paper explores how and to what extent Stoic virtue ethics and critical Freirean ecopedagogies can advance the UN’s vision for progressive educational systems with transformative societal effects. We propose an integrated solution that provides ecopedagogical concepts a more robust philosophical foundation whilst also offering Stoicism additional tools to tackle those 21st century problems, such as climate change and environmental degradation, that ancient Stoics could not have envisioned nor scientifically understood. The result of the paper is the preliminary theoretical underpinnings of an educational framework that facilitates progress towards both individual and collective wellbeing whilst also encompassing planetary level concerns so as to holistically promote and plan for a fuller expression of the terms “sustainable development” and “global citizen”