Escaping to the country: Media, nostalgia, and the new food industries

ABSTRACT

Over the past decade in the West, television cooking shows have popularized interest in the provenance of food against a backdrop of public concern about the practices of industrial food production. This article explores two series that offer self-sufficiency as a solution to the problem of industrial agriculture. Escape to River Cottage and Gourmet Farmer each centre on a narrative of a city-dweller moving to the country to set up a smallholding. With their nostalgia for an earlier—simultaneously unproblematic and emotionally fulfilling—time of food production, these series imagine a Utopian lifestyle in which audiences are encouraged to choose to produce and consume differently. That it is (middle-class) men who are rediscovering traditional food practices highlights how media discourses surrounding food production can become entangled in gendered representations that give rise to niche food products and experiences designed to ameliorate feelings of risk and uncertainty in contemporary food systems.

Acknowledgment

The author would like to thank Hannah Stark for her helpful feedback on an earlier draft of this article.

Funding

This research was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award (DE140101412).

Notes

¹ The most recent series final achieved over 700,000 viewers nationally, outstripping most of the commercial networks (SBS, 2012-2013, p. 69).

² See Parkins and Craig (2011) for an opposing view.

³ See Nosi and Zanni (2004, p. 789) for a similar argument about the Slow Food movement.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award (DE140101412).