The Class Politics of Alternative Food: Informing Public Health Policy ...

Sociology Compass 8/10 (2014): 1216–1228, 10.1111/soc4.12202

The Class Politics of Alternative Food: Informing Public Health Policy and Remedying Health Inequality Mercedes C. Lyson1,2* 1

Department of Sociology, Brown University Department of Health Sciences and the College of Computer and Information Science, Northeastern University

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Abstract

The past decade has witnessed an interesting coupling between alternative ways to produce and consume food (farmers’ markets, Consumer Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares, and urban gardens to name a few) and individual health-seeking. While much of this activity rests on an ideological rhetoric of individual choice and “lifestyleism” strongly correlated with social class, there have also been a host of very different government and policy efforts aimed at improving poor food environments and the vulnerable populations that inhabit them in the name of public health. Efforts such as zoning against fast food franchises, placing stipulations on what benefit programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) can be used for, and taxing foods deemed unhealthy are sparking public debate because they cut to the heart of many American socio-political debates: the tension between individual liberties and government intervention. Based on existing scholarship of alternative food, health, and bodies, and the author’s insights gleaned from ethnographic research, this article sheds light on the potential ineffectiveness of such public health efforts despite positive – and often times class-conscious – intentions. Such an acknowledgement raises critical questions about who benefits and who misses out in alternative food projects. While this article situates these questions squarely in the American context, it also highlights the need for other situated studies that emphasize other countries’ particular political, cultural, and economic contexts that shape contemporary food systems, and their accompanying moral politics.

Introduction In recent years, the alternative food movement has become a “master frame” to address a number of pressing social issues in the United States, including public health concerns about general health status and an obesity epidemic (Dixon et al. 2007; Guthman 2011), environmental degradation (Alkon 2008; Saldivar-Tanaka and Krasny 2004), regional economic revitalization (Hinrichs 2003; Lyson 2004), the loss of the family farm (Lyson and Raymer 2000), and farmworker rights ( Jaffee 2007). Yet, as with other social movements, the alternative food movement is characterized by differing agendas and schisms between actors (Alkon and McCullen 2011). A common critique of the alternative food movement is that many of its recommended practices (shopping at farmer’s markets or participating in community-supported agriculture shares, for example) are a luxury of middle- and upper-class educated people (who also happen to be largely White/Caucasian), who not only have the necessary income, but also the time, knowledge, and identity politics that contribute to their participation in these alternative food spheres (DuPuis and Gillon 2009; Guthman 2011; Jordan 2007; Slocum 2006). At the same time, however, a number of very different health-related food initiatives are geared towards the working poor and lower class Americans. These include efforts taken by all levels of government to regulate food environments on behalf of poor and minority citizens who either lack the structural access to procuring healthy affordable food or are not sufficiently “educated” on the benefits of alternative food options. Examples include zoning against fast food franchises © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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(Mair et al. 2005; Wood 2007), posting calorie counts in restaurants (Rosenbloom 2010), placing stipulations on what benefit programs like food stamps and WIC can buy (Eng 2012; Whitefield 2012), and proposals to tax foods deemed “unhealthy” (Grynbaum 2012). While most of these efforts have minorities and the working poor as their “target populations,” some efforts are also posited as population-wide public efforts – for example, Mayor Bloomberg’s attempt to ban large soft drinks in New York City (Grynbaum 2012). Outside the United States, there are also similar population-wide efforts that ostensibly cut across the class spectrum. One particular example and accompanying critical analysis comes from Evans and Colls’s (2009) work on the UK’s use of the body mass index calculator as an intervention tool among school-age children. Yet, beyond a program’s enumerated target population, vulnerable populations tend to be those who bear the brunt of unintended consequences because of more limited opportunity structures in society. Indeed, the effects of policy can often be quite different from intent (Nestle 2003; Ringold 2002). This article seeks to understand the different ways that people’s bodies and health are governed through this contemporary coupling of alternative food production and consumption and resultant health status, specifically in the US context. The more paternalistic efforts at regulating food and health spark intense public debate because they cut to the heart of many American social–political debates: the tension between individual liberties and government intervention. Disentangling this requires an analysis infused with an understanding of American cultural and political history, which set these ideological precedents centuries ago. Indeed, much current work on food, weight, and bodies tends to neglect this deeply rooted cultural history, which is essential for developing a comprehensive understanding of the current landscape of debates around health, bodies, and social class. Likewise, it will be important for other scholars studying different international contexts to analogously account for their cases’ respective cultural histories, to provide comprehensive accounts of current empirical cases. Theoretically, how can we understand alternative food activism discourse and practice as part of a larger governmentality framework? Governmentality refers to the ways that societies both practice governance and employ “technologies” that generate forms of self-government. Notions of health governmentality (Armstrong 1995; Foucault 1977–1978) and “body policing” are useful theoretical frameworks to apply to alternative food projects because they emphasize how it is one’s personal responsibility to maintain a healthy body, even amidst environments that are not conducive to these aims. Within the realm of individual bodies, citizens are constantly implored to be purposeful and conscientious about maintaining their health. Despite the fact that the alternative food movement ostensibly seeks to remedy this disjuncture, there has been mounting criticism that the reality has not lived up to the ideals (Donald and Blay-Palmer 2006; Friedmann 2005; Guthman 2007, 2008; Slocum 2006). In the following sections of this article, I lay out a brief primer on the rise of the alternative food movement, both its current iterations and its historical antecedents. Next, I discuss the specifics of the “lifestylism” class-based habits associated with food alternatives, and the drives towards seeking health and self-governmentality. Understanding these class-based differences sheds light on why certain segments of the population are unwilling or unable to police their own bodies, and the role that “top-down” actors – such as the government or non-profits/ activists – play in policing others’ bodies. From here, I transition to elaborating on these particular public health efforts to improve the public health, as well as why some consider them problematic, in a socio-political debate over individual liberty versus government intervention. Finally, I end with an assertion that the current f lurry of excitement and activity around alternative food as a “saving grace” has made people myopic about the broader failings of the American healthcare system. Reliable access to quality, affordable food is just one piece of the picture of health, and without consistent medical care – especially preventative – many may never be able to realize optimum health and well-being, particularly in a society like the United States with its high levels of stratification and income inequality (Wilkinson 2005; Williams and Jackson 2005). © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.


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The (rise of ) the alternative food movement In the post-World War II era, systems of agricultural production and consumption in the United States began changing rapidly and dramatically as a result of technological advances and an increasingly globalized world economy. The consolidation of power in the food sector has been well documented by sociologists (Heffernan 1999; Lyson and Raymer 2000). Farms have morphed into mass agribusiness operations, and farmers have been reduced to producers of basic commodities for large agribusiness corporations (Hinrichs and Lyson 2007). Many critics have pointed to the contentious issues of government farm subsidies, the rise of agribusiness and corporate consolidation over the food system, the predominance of a “fast food culture,” and the ecological un-sustainability of the global food system as all threatening the viability of a more localized food system that was once able to reliably feed local communities. Further, as the food system has gone global, many communities have arguably lost a sense of identity and connection with respect to where their food comes from, as well as an erosion of relationships that were once formed and fostered around local agriculture (Berry 1977; Hinrichs and Lyson 2007; Lyson 2004) Despite this being one of the overarching sentiments among scholars studying alternative food practice in the US context, a number of other countries (both developed and developing) are home to communities based around rural livelihoods, even though food networks and commodity chains are undeniably global ( Jaffee 2007; McMichael 1994; Shackleton et al. 2001). The past decade has witnessed significant movement and action around alternative food in the United States, accompanied by public champions, books, news articles, and documentaries. While the spin is often slightly different, the primary criticism is that America’s globalized industrial agricultural system has created an unhealthy food environment that is making people and the environment unwell. Yet, what has been transpiring during the 2000s is not necessarily new. For example, Belasco (1989) traces the history of “countercultural cuisine” during the 1960s and 1970s, as part of broader social movement activism and unrest. How and what people eat has been a political economic concern for many hundreds of years. For example, sugar played a pivotal role in changing the prevailing economic order and social relationships between the UK and the Caribbean from the 18th century onward (Mintz 1985), and there were immense biological and cultural consequences of the “Columbian Exchange” post-1492 (Crosby 2003). In response to the rise of agribusiness and corporate control over the food system, the civic agriculture and food justice perspectives each after alternative approaches to food production and consumption. Lyson’s (2004) civic agriculture builds on a participatory democracy and civic engagement framework, advocating for a relocalization of food production that is tightly linked to a community’s social and economic development. This includes activities such as farmers’ markets, community gardens, community-supported agriculture, farm-to-school programs, roadside fruit and vegetable stands, urban gardens, and community kitchens. They represent a counter-voice, in social movement form, to the conventional paradigm of food production and consumption. As Lyson contends, These new organizational forms have the potential to nurture local economic development, maintain diversity and quality in products, and provide forums where producers and consumers can come together to solidify bonds of local identity and solidarity. By rebuilding linkages between farmers and consumers wherever possible, communities throughout the United States will establish a foundation for a more socially and environmentally integrated food system (Lyson 2004, 7).

Along with the embracing of civic agriculture, there are related and promising notions of food democracy and food citizenship that question the role citizens currently play in the industrial food system (Hassanein 2003; Wilkins 2005). At the core of these concepts is the idea that © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.



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citizens can and should be actively participating in shaping the food system on a local, regional, national, and global level. Analogous to and inf luenced by the splintering off of the environmental justice movement from the mainstream environmental movement in the 1980s, the burgeoning food justice movement is premised on an anti-oppression ideology that activists mobilize around. While the mainstream alternative food movement primarily coheres around ideals of localism and sustainable agriculture, it has been critiqued for failing to incorporate concerns about the structural racial and economic inequality in the food system, as discussed earlier. As such, the critiques of elitism come to the fore. The food justice movement encompasses disenfranchised populations such as minorities, women, and the working poor (Bagdonis et al. 2009; Griffith 2003; Williams 2005). However, as Sbicca (2012) points out in his case study of People’s Grocery in West Oakland, social justice means different things to different people, and this complicates the movement’s ability to maintain unity in diversity. He notes, “Tensions often arise however when a radical ideology in various versions from multiple previous movements is woven into mobilization efforts by organizations seeking to build the activist base needed to transform the agrifood system” (455). Ultimately, while food justice movements do open up new spaces for social movement activity, like mainstream alternative food movement activism, they may not be a panacea for solving food-related racial and economic inequality. Ultimately, what is at stake is that eating well and participating in alternative food becomes another sphere of stratification, which contributes to enduring health inequalities in society (Haas 2006). Despite this bleak assertion, the alternative food movement is a vibrant social movement with pockets of participatory, grassroots activism that positively affects the way people nourish themselves, their families, and their communities. As such, these critiques of the alternative food movement should not be construed as criticisms of individual actors. Individual motivations, beliefs, ethics, and actions are non-static, and constantly evolving to ref lect increasingly larger conversations about social justice and inequality in the United States. “Lifestylism” and health-seeking Within the alternative food movement, there are a growing number of people who “seek health” in quite labor- and time-intensive ways, such as urban homesteading (Tortorello 2011), home food preservation, home fermentation (Bilger 2010; Katz and Fallon 2003), wild food foraging, preparing foods traditionally (Fallon and Enig 2003), and sourcing food from non-mainstream sources. Yet, when people are poor and disenfranchised, they face entirely different sets of life constraints, and as such, their opportunity and choice structures are analogously different. These choices, tradeoffs, and priorities are too easy to criticize from the outside. This acknowledgement – that life is hard under poverty and that it affects daily choices – is in no way novel or surprising. And yet, even with the expectation that poverty makes life difficult, the judgment and moralizing that attaches to these choices is pronounced. As Emmie, a health clinic worker, described, You know, in the old days you could tell that someone had food stamps in the grocery store. Now you’ve got the [EBT] card, [it’s] a little different. But everybody would tell you the story about someone they saw in the grocery store line who had a birthday cake and how much cheaper it was to buy the box of cake mix. Everyone can tell you what’s wrong with poor people…[that] they’re just making poor choices. That it’s cheaper to buy the mix. But then, you need oil. Then, you need eggs. Then, an oven, and a pan (Interview 30). © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.



A common rhetoric deployed in food movement activism is about the importance of choice and a prioritizing of choice – that people need to vote with their dollars and spend money on things that are important (i.e. healthy food). But this “choice” is so heavily wrapped up with access to capital, education, resources like transportation, neighborhood environment, and time – these things that become the real luxuries. To some extent, this has been acknowledged in American public policy rhetoric and city planning. Much research has been done on structural barriers to procuring healthy food on an ongoing basis (Blanchard and Matthews 2007; Freedman and Bell 2009; Gallagher and Mari Gallagher Research and Consulting Group 2006), and the term “food desert” – particularly applied to poor urban neighborhoods – has become commonplace in popular media, policy and planning, and food activist/non-profit circles. However, broader cultural conversations about time use, work, and leisure remain largely inchoate in the United States, contributing to an oft-cited “workaholic” population, lacking the lauded civic engagement of either decades past, or our European counterparts ( Jung 2010; Oldenburg 1999; Schor 1993). While this cuts across class boundaries, if one has the necessary income, time can be managed differently. For example, an investment banker who works 80-h weeks can choose to have a personal chef prepare daily meals to his or her dietary needs and concerns; a person working two minimum wage jobs may choose to go through a fast food drive-thru. Both are opting to have someone else prepare their food, but how each choice might be judged should be obvious. Separate from these structural impediments, Pierre Bourdieu’s most widely cited concept habitus (1994) helps us understand why social practices are characterized by regularities (that seem to reproduce themselves), yet without explicit rules that dictate such practices. For example, working class kids tend to get working class jobs, and aff luent kids tend to develop aff luent cultural tastes. Yet, habitus does not act alone, but instead acts in tandem with the larger environment, or “field” to Bourdieu. What we can take from the idea of habitus, as well as the theory of the leisure class (Veblen 1899), is that structural constraints develop and are reproduced through consumption habits particular to certain social groups. Bourdieu’s work in Reproduction (1977) and Distinction (1984) links habits or tastes to positions in social space and how different groups of people develop cultural peculiarities that distinguish them from other groups. Such differences can turn into class struggles, with accompanying sets of normalizing judgment and power politics. It is in these struggles for distinction in which distinct class habitus – or “lifestylism” – is formed. Thinking about consumption as class-based in the context of alternative food projects strengthens the argument that social position is the avenue through which food choice (and subsequent health outcomes) get (re) appropriated. For example, some families may engage in activities such as canning, preserving, and making bread as a function of economic limitation at the time. As part of the current alternative food movement, such homesteading-related pursuits are becoming the “best” normative way to nourish oneself and one’s family, and ironically, it is those of privileged social position – in terms of income, time, spatial location, and so on – who are able to most fully realize and participate in these healthier ways of being in the world. This prioritizing of food according to some antiquated ideas about “the way things used to be” is a common sentiment embodied in mainstream privileged food politics (Guthman 2004). It seems too often forgotten that this “re-elevation of food” is either (a) not founded on an accurate historical reality or (b) is tightly wrapped up with issues of privilege, power, and social position in society. Post-World War II, convenience and processed foods were largely embraced by the public and the more aff luent public especially because such processed foods tended to cost more (Shapiro 2004). Now, it seems these sentiments have come full circle, as there is a widespread lauding of spending more time on food preparation. However, the motivation behind these more time- and labor-intensive pursuits is cloaked by a wide range of © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.



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motivations and personal politics. While perhaps not representative of America’s mainstream middle class population, the personal politics that go in tandem with food alternatives do arguably represent the highly visible liberal/progressive, intellectualist sect of Americans who dominate major metropolitan areas and represent the “creative class” (Donald and Blay-Palmer 2006; Florida 2003). What distinguishes how different social groups seek health and food is intricately linked to a broader set of structural and cultural inf luences that create and reproduce social position. In this sense, a privileged set of social values underlies the ideologically democratic and egalitarian ethos of mainstream food alternatives. Regulating health and bodies In tandem with the governmentality frame, Foucault’s concept of biopower (1978–1979) helps understand how individual bodies are policed and governed – characteristics like race, fertility, gender, body size, and other physical, embodied attributes are shaped, managed, and selected in order to achieve political (or economic, from a Marxist analysis of the body perspective) aims. Life itself is something to be monitored and regulated, achieved through the continuous surveillance of its mechanisms. Both technologies and institutions achieve this regulation, and it comes from both top-down and bottom-up scales. Top-down governing could be conceptualized as “body policing,” while bottom-up governing can be thought of as the inciting of self-governance with respect to health (Armstrong 1995; Foucault 1978–1979; Peters 2006). Importantly, moral politics and policing plays a critical role in the realm of selfgovernmentality, and erecting boundaries between normative and non-normative bodies (Metzl and Kirkland 2010; Morone 2003). Norms surrounding health, and healthy bodies, both serve to create a standard for individuals to aim for and a standard with which to judge those who do not conform to such norms. While norms relating to health and body size serve to discipline bodies, there is a strong undercurrent of morality and judgment towards those who “fail” at such self-governance, or a judgment on their personal choices and lifestyles. We police ourselves and police others every day, and food is an arena of life where such moral policing comes to the forefront – both because body size is a visible, although faulty, marker of one’s health status and because food provisioning and eating is a social activity (Berlant 2010; Colls 2007; Guthman and DuPuis 2006; Orbach 2012a,2012b). Further, these lifestyle choices around food and the regulation of bodies are tightly coupled with the post-capitalist expectations of Americans as citizen consumers (Trentmann 2004). Indeed, as Guthman and Dupuis (2006) point out, a neoliberal polity like the United States creates an environment and a culture where to “succeed,” one must want less amid an environment of plenty. Body size has become a way to display this visibly, and an arena where moralizing collides with economy and social status. The post-1980 American context has witnessed a multiplicity of new or reconfigured actors who carry out governing and management priorities as they relate to health. One defining characteristic of neoliberalism (the prevailing political economic logic post-1980) has been a reconfiguration of the central state, leading to new “hybrid” actors who effectively play the role of the state, disguised as community members, NGO workers/ activists, doctors, therapists, health workers, and businesspeople (Haney 2010; Mahajan 2008). The state seeks to externalize healthcare costs and has been able to divest much of this responsibility to public–private partnerships. There is a common goal and vision between these nonstate actors carrying out policy agendas and mission-driven non-profits and other local actors/ activists to intervene and educate. Precisely because non-state actors are the most visible players, they often act in more palatable ways that are not interpreted as directly coercive but which nevertheless remain morally laden. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.



There are numerous, non-mutually exclusive examples of these scales of activity that highlight the top-down versus bottom-up distinction – an important conceptual distinction to make in critically discussing food movement activism and health-seeking. Mentioned earlier, a tax on soda or junk food would qualify as a top-down governance strategy. Such a population-wide effort ostensibly affects everyone equally – since the tax would be the same for all consumers – but many argue that such “sin taxes” are regressive and classist. However, big government liberals in favor of nanny state regulatory efforts might argue that no one should be consuming substances that are either “proven” to be detrimental to one’s health or speculatively linked to ill health. Yet, something like a soda tax is problematic in the same ways that delimiting what SNAP benefits can purchase is problematic: despite nutritional dogma, there are no hard and fast lines about what is “healthy” and what is not. A look at the history of nutrition advice (Nestle 2003) yields conf licting and contradictory advice through the years, and often to the detriment to people’s health. For example, the low-fat diet craze of the 1980s has now been completely debunked because science has now shown that “fat does not make you fat” (Taubes 2002). Thus, while policy makers may want to vilify soda as the persona non grata in the fight against obesity, the picture is more complicated. In response to the fraught class politics – both overt and subtle – much top-down health promotion engenders among target populations (Guthman 2008; Ringold 2002), there have been a multitude of micro-level grassroots initiatives (sometimes institutionalized and sometimes not) aimed at reforming the local food environment and claiming a seat at the table amidst concerns of elitism and classism. One iconic example from the food activism world is People’s Grocery in Oakland, California, a community-based organization that “develops creative solutions to the health problems in our community that stem from a lack of access and knowledge about healthy, fresh foods” (People’s Grocery). Rooted in a food justice perspective, People’s Grocery strives for a participatory framework that creates solutions for the community, by the community – rather than an external organization. People’s Grocery has been studied by other food movement scholars as a prime case of grassroots food movement activism (Alkon 2008; Haletky et al. 2006; Sbicca 2012). Yet, while such efforts may be more inclusive and bottom up in their ethos and practice, they too struggle with how best to encourage – or incentivize – both citizens and the food environment to make and provide healthier food options, respectively. While top-down attempts at education and behavior change may struggle with paternalism and resonance, and, at times, individually resisted on the grounds of exercising personal choice, initiatives that strive to be inclusive at every stage of creating alternatives and take social justice as a key imperative likely stand to resonate more with populations in need (Minkler and Wallerstein 2010; Potvin et al. 2005). American healthcare and moral policing Each generation fears decline, frets over spoiled kids, and scolds its sinners – usually poor people (Morone 2003, 14). Access to good quality and affordable food on a regular basis is only part of a much larger picture in which people strive towards health. Such larger structural forces, which continually reinforce social inequality, prevent many individuals from ever achieving their best health, despite alternative food activism efforts. Indeed, with this understanding, we can disavow the rhetorical dogma surrounding “individual choice” and lifestylism as the ultimate arbiter of good health for some and ill health for others. It is well known that the United States is among the few industrialized nations in the world that does not guarantee access to health care for its population. Statistics from the US Census Bureau cite that in 2010, 49.9 million or 16.3 percent of the population was uninsured, up from © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.



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49 million or 16.1 percent of the population in 2009. It is also well known and widely cited that the United States spends more on health care per capita ($7146 according to the World Health Organization), and on health care as a percentage of GDP (15.2 percent), yet tends to rank last in quality of care when compared with other similar countries. Government programs, like Medicare and Medicaid, directly cover 88 million, or 27.8 percent, of Americans, yet only exist in the form of statutory law. As established by the US Supreme Court Case Maher v. Roe in 1977, there is no constitutional right to health care in the United States. There is also a large uninsured population of Americans – 45.7 million, or 15.3 percent of the population according to 2007 statistics. While such numbers do not distinguish between voluntary disavowal of health care versus those in need and want of health care (for example, some estimates point out that nearly one third of the uninsured population would actually qualify for a government program), there is an obvious and alarming number of “coverage gaps,” especially for vulnerable populations like children, the elderly, women, the working poor, and non-citizens. Healthcare reform has been a topic of immense national and public debate and controversy for many decades. In March of 2010, President Barak Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law, along with the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act. These acts include a number of provisions to be implemented over the next 4 years that will effectively expand healthcare coverage for 32 million Americans, and are forecasted to reduce the overall costs of healthcare delivery. This legislation represents the most significant government expansion and overhaul of the US healthcare system since Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. Such debates around healthcare reform are so important precisely because access to quality health care from birth is an essential part of remedying inequality in society (Fiscella et al. 2000; Haas 2006). There is an arguably myopic understanding of the role food plays in overall health, reinforced by the American nutrition establishment, and the political economy nexus of Big Ag, Big Pharma, and cultural constructions of normative bodies. Such a silver bullet approach (i.e. solving food access will solve everything) is not uncommon in mission-driven causes, but it is important to constantly expand out and understand the much broader context in which these issues are nestled. By recognizing that American health disparities and inequality are created and perpetuated by an unequal healthcare structure and unequal sound structure more generally, it forces an evaluation of the choice-based lifestyle model and discourse on which so much of food movement activity rests.

Moral policing Tracing back to America’s Puritan roots and Protestant work ethic, morality has long been used to control and discipline individuals, and employed as a powerful tool to draw boundaries of social inclusion and exclusion. Understanding the American history of moral panics (Morone 2003) leads us to understand how people are morally policed in everyday life – especially in the embodied sense. By moral panic, I refer to the historically episodic population-wide sentiment towards a particular social issue that appears to threaten social norms or the social order. The morality around the politics of sin lends crucial insight into the current debates surrounding food, health, and social inequality. In his book on the politics of morality, political scientist Jim Morone describes how America as a country has no distinct historical lineage of its people and has continually strived for ways to create social boundaries. With no stable cultural archetype to determine “who belongs,” Americans measure one another by a vaguely delineated, hugely moralistic code of conduct. America’s uniqueness stems from the role of faith and overwhelming belief in God (the Protestant work ethic), its political structure as a federal constitutional republic, continual and evolving © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.



encounters with diversity vis-à-vis immigration, and a capitalist economy that generates status anxiety tied to economic mobility. American history is rife with examples of morality politics: the witch trials of the late 1600s/ early 1700s, the slavery/abolition crusades of the 1800s, the Temperance movement and Prohibition in the 1920s, the War on Drugs in the 1980s, and its most current visible iteration – the moral panic around obesity in the 2000s. In Hellfire Nation, Morone details four major “sins” that have defined these, and other moral panics and politics. First is laziness, and the moral iconography that surrounds poor Americans. Gluttony, the “sin” most clearly associated with the current moral panic surrounding obesity as a public health problem would likely be an outgrowth of this sin Morone details. As the Puritans took economic success as a divine seal of approval, the cultural link was made between underwork and sin, versus hard work, salvation, and good citizenship. Second, drinking and drugs, a sin that developed in the early 19th century, made the underclass more frightening and a threat to the “innocents.” Third was violence, particularly acute in depraved “dangerous” cities. And fourth, the most powerful sin has been sex, which challenges the fundamental Puritan precept of controlling oneself. This sin has become inextricable from gender politics, embodied in debates around birth control, abortion, homosexuality, rape, marriage, and divorce. A similar panic-policy pattern has cycled throughout American history, as the policies rush towards those in society who sit on the margins of power – racial/ethnic minorities, and the underclass. The contemporary context is a complicated moral universe. The global economy, complete with technology, communication, and information advances, has driven social revolutions that challenge existing social and political institutions. With unabated choice and opportunities to pursue individual freedom, this raises fundamental question about the public/private dichotomy and control. While American political thought and policy is based in classical liberal thought, that the state may not meddle in private affairs, American politics looks entirely different from the vantage point of the economic bottom. Ultimately, privacy rights really only work for those who wield power in their personal lives. Despite its credos of freedom and individuality, liberalism simultaneously tolerates ample poverty and inequality. In this sea of social stratification with its Protestant work ethic underpinnings, there is an ever-heightened focus on “good” and “bad” individuals. Concluding thoughts This article is part of a broader cannon of scholarship aimed at promoting a shift in framing and discourse surrounding food, health, and bodies: away from individual choice and behavioral models and towards a nuanced understanding of the lived reality of stratification, the different lives people lead, and how health is a realm in which many inequities come into focus and are played out through this currently popular social movement coalescing around alternative food. To this end, those working in different capacities on food and health issues are increasingly recognizing the importance of both ref lective practice and scholarship, as well as a pragmatic interrogation of alternative food project outcomes (Alkon and Agyeman 2011). At stake here has been the question of equality and achievement of ideal health, and who might be being still left out of reaping the benefits of a more localized, smaller-scale food system. Additionally, questions of public policy and public health interventions have been on the table, with the underlying question of what the most effective space and scale of action is for improving public health. While there is significant debate over the “nanny state” mentioned here, the counter-argument would be, in lieu of overarching structural change/income redistribution, how can food production and consumption be more grassroots and democratic? There are indeed spaces of hope in community-level food initiatives that sit both within and outside © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.



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formalized, institutional structures that embody grassroots visions of what a more ideal food system looks like. In terms of the public policy discussions currently happening around public health interventions versus civil liberties encroachment, it is the way these conversations are framed that needs to shift. This discourse shifting is an important part of remedying social inequality and health inequality more specifically, working alongside efforts to broader the social safety net (e.g. universal health care and universal day care) and providing Americans with a truly livable wage. Conversations about the best way to manage public health will be forever ongoing and evolving, and particularly in the US context – where liberty is arguably valued over equality – these conversations are likely to be partisan and polemical. Yet, such questions are never static and will hopefully ref lect a pluralistic perspective of voices that are considerate of social class and equality. Analyzing a social movement at a particular moment in time offers an in-depth look at how a myriad of issues coalesce to create the dominant rhetoric, discourse, framing, and practice of particular issues. This article is clearly most relevant to understanding this set of issues in the American context, yet there is an important wider applicability of these issues. The centrality of food and food systems to human societies is uncontested, and one of the aims of this article was to implore food movement scholars to consider the deep cultural histories of cases studied. Sociological research on the alternative food movement specifically, and more broadly on food, health, and the body, needs to continue in light of these ever-evolving contexts, with particular focus on how class position affects people’s lived realities of how they seek health. Acknowledgement The research that informed this article was supported by a National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement grant Award #: SES-1128905. Short Biography Mercedes’s research sits at the intersection of the sociology of food and food systems, sociology of the body, sociology of health, stratification and inequality, social theory, and cultural politics. This article is based on over 2 years of participant observation in Rhode Island’s alternative food movement, combined with 83 in-depth interviews. Mercedes earned her PhD in sociology in May of 2013 from Brown University. She also holds a Masters of Arts in sociology from Brown, and a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Latin American Studies from the University of Chicago. Mercedes currently holds a postdoctoral research position at Northeastern University where she is researching digital health technologies in disadvantaged communities as a way to ameliorate health inequities. Note * Correspondence address: Mercedes C. Lyson, Department of Sociology, Brown University, Box 1916, Providence, RI 02912, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

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