Caring for the Middle Class Soul

Abstract

This paper insists that the writing of Michael Pollan be analyzed with respect to its popularity among members of the liberal professional middle class. I understand Pollan's writing as lifestyle instruction, a technology of the self in Foucault's sense, offering readers tips for cultivating a more ethical relationship with food. While Pollan's advice often aligns with imperatives of neoliberal citizenship, his widespread uptake within this class formation is more reflective of ambivalence about neoliberalism than simply another instantiation of it. Pollan's work is productive of classed technologies of the self and an ethical, albeit highly ambivalent, form of neoliberal citizenship.

Keywords:

• ethical consumerism
• neoliberalism
• governmentality
• liberal professional middle class
• Michael Pollan
• ambivalence

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Heidi Zimmerman

Heidi Zimmerman is a critical media studies PhD candidate in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Minnesota. She studies food and environmental lifestyle media and consumer culture in the context of neoliberalism. She approaches such media through the theories of affect, governmentality, consumer citizenship, branding, class, ethical consumerism and feminism. Her dissertation brings these theories to bear on the environmental lifestyle media brand, Planet Green. Department of Communication Studies, 225 Ford Hall, 224 Church Street S.E., University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA ([email protected]).