Making the Most of Less

Abstract

Rising food prices and changes in the world economy currently affect not only low-income populations, but also relatively privileged population groups. On the basis of a qualitative interview study this article investigates how Danish households with different income levels, educational levels and household composition experience and cope with constraints on their household food budgets. The analysis draws on Zygmunt Bauman’s framework of thought, centering especially on differences in “touristic” and “vagabondic” paths to better utilization of purchased food products and adaptation to new tastes and markets. The study participants’ experiences and practices in the face of buying constraints range from the empowering stimulus of self-development, creativity and engagement with global environmental challenges to loss of food-related life quality and feelings of inadequacy.

Keywords:

• food budget restraint
• coping practices
• consumer identity
• late modernity
• qualitative methods
• welfare society

Notes

1. Bauman distinguishes three dimensions of security—or Sicherheit—as important: security, certainty and safety (Bauman 1999, 17). It should be noted that the present study was not designed to explore all these dimensions, but focused on interviewees’ experience of insecurity/security in an economic sense.

2. Bauman has also offered other metaphors to describe life strategies of liquid society, such as “the stroller” and “the player,” but here we chose those of the vagabond and the tourist as he himself has pointed to those as the most telling ones (Bauman 1997, 93).

3. The term “flexicurity” is applied to describe the balance between levels of flexibility and security on the labour market. The Danish version of the model has gained positive attention for its contribution to Danish successful employment performance. It is characterized by proving “security in the form of unemployment benefits, active labour market policies and life-long learning, while at the same time having a low level of employment security and a flexible labour market measured by average tenure and worker-turnover” (Madsen 2014, 1).

4. Our choice thereby to create the neologism of “vagabondic” is also in part aesthetically motivated to match the existing adjective “touristic.”