GOOD TASTE

Abstract

In political theory citizens are defined as being willing to serve the ‘common good’ while consumers are supposed to seek ‘pleasure’. The two terms pull in different directions, so that adding a hyphen is not enough to craft a figure capable of acting in ways that are generous as well as gratifying. This, or so I will argue, is linked with the understanding of the body that lurks in the background. The idea is that the body is naturally greedy. It only acts ‘properly’ if norms are imposed on it from the outside. To interfere with this understanding, I seek help from advertisements for ‘good food’ as well as from ethnographic research into the way bodily pleasure (rather than being innate) is being shaped in socio-material practices. It might as well be shaped in wise, sensitive and responsive ways. This leads me to suggest that, in theory, we experiment with a ‘consumer-citizen’ whose normativity is literally incorporated. I propose that, despite the caveats, we might call this normativity good taste.

Keywords:

• consumer-citizen
• normativity
• political theory
• body

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Cor van der Weele, Jeannette Pols, René Gabriels, Irene Costera Meijer, Tsjalling Swierstra, Dick Willems, Sarah Whatmore, David Healy, Steve Woolgar, Nick Bingham, Mieke Aerts and John Law for support, discussion, literature advice and/or comments. John Law also worked on the English of this text. I presented earlier versions to the Amsterdam philosophers at a seminar on Philosophy in the Public Sphere; a Lancaster conference on Food and Farming; and an anniversary meeting of the CSI in Paris: thanks to all participants of these gatherings for their remarks. Two anonymous reviewers of this journal also gave comments, as severe as they were productive. A more formal note of thanks to the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research whose program Ethics, Research and Policy paid the grant that allowed me to work on this paper as a part of the project Good Food, Good Information.

Notes

1. The question how ‘consumers’ were shaped historically and how what people buy became linked with ‘preferences’ is the topic of sociologies of consumption. See, for an insightful example and overview, Sassatelli (2007).

2. Michel Foucault suggested the term ‘heterotopia’ as an alternative to that other elsewhere, the ‘utopia’, that is a good place to dream about, an idealization (Foucault 1986). Heterotopias are places that hold other values, but also other styles of evaluation than the topos where one happens to be. Foucault advised us to look for such heterotopias as vantage points from which to study our own site and situation.

3. Obviously, this figure has been theorized before. For an illuminating historical exploration of the relationship between customer and citizen, that differentiates between the US and ‘Europe’, see Kroen (2004). For the argument that ‘preference’ is too narrow a term to designate what a consumer-citizen wants, see Newholm (2000). For a study that focuses on the ‘choice’ relevant to consuming and citizenship, see Schudson (2006). There is a lot more and I cannot begin to be inclusive here.

4. Here, one may think here for instance of Clarks et al. (2007).

5. For a series of chilling examples see Heynen et al. (2007).

6. My analysis of these qualifications implied here as ‘goods’ and of ‘goods’ as qualities that may be variously staged, graded and related in practices, has been inspired by the work of Boltanski and Thévenot. In English, see Boltanski and Thévenot (2006), and Thévenot (2002).

7. For good counter stories to the obesity panic, see: Kulick and Meneley (2005).

8. In his fascinating study of food moralities, John Coveney demonstrates that the nutritionists’ call to ‘eat wisely’ does not merely resonate with the Christian call for moderation, but directly stems from it. In nutritional science the Christian obligation to abstain from pleasure is provided with a scientific rationale. See Coveney (2006).

9. For a marvellous attack on a ‘nutritionism’ as a science that sees and measures food as a set of isolated ‘nutrients’ see Pollan (2008). Pollan's problem is not just the negligence of satisfaction. He also argues that the focus on ‘nutrients’ makes what is put into a bottle or a package, ‘in essence’ (that is as far as its nutrients go), similar to a fresh apple, orange, pomegranate and so on. This favours industry that puts things in packages to begin with.

10. For the shops themselves, see the engaging analysis of the way a supermarket stages our choices as well as our identity as someone who chooses, in Cochoy (2007).

11. Even though this is a British brand, I found its bottles in my local Utrecht green store.

12. There are good reasons to be sceptical about such studies. For some of the complexities involved, see the debates assembled in Nestle and Dixon (2004).

13. I came across a quote like this on the Dutch package. The English quoted here, however, is not my translation, but comes from the Activia website. See http://activiachallenge.com/

14. Goods are not necessarily drawn together even in attempts to sell. In her unforgettable analysis of recipes in women's magazines Rosalind Coward showed that they portrayed food as simultaneously forbidden and lustful. As in all pornography, in the food pornography that ensued, the attractiveness of the food depicted is increased by its being forbidden (Coward 1994).

15. This particular form of fairness draws the conditions under which food is being produced into the contexts where it is consumed. Given that consumption and production (and even scholarly discussions about these) tend to be kept apart, this is quite an achievement. For a critique of and an escape from the production/consumption separation in food studies see Whatmore (2002). However, other kinds of ‘fairness’, such as the question as to whether or not it is ‘fair’ that some of us overeat while others are hungry or even starve, are not attended to here. See, for such unfairness, Lang and Heasman (2004), and for the Fair Trade movement itself, Nicholls and Opal (2005).

16. For the details and the images, see (in Dutch): http://www.niza.nl/detail_page.phtml?&publish=&lang=&text00=&text01=&text14=&text10=70erjaren1&nav=n2i&[email protected]&password=9999&groups=NIZA

17. I quote and translate from a Dutch package. For more information and original English language wordings along similar lines, see: http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/index.htm

18. Crucial to what one might call the empirical turn in aesthetics and the studies of ‘practices of pleasure’ that I draw on here, is the work of Antoine Hennion on ‘amateurs of music’ (see for example Hennion 2001). In this tradition, acquiring the art of tasting wine has been studied in intricate detail by Geneviève Teil (in English, see Teil & Hennion 2004). For the shift from pleasure as something that might just happen to us while we wait for it passively, to pleasure as something that is only experienced as it is actively organized, see the analysis of music lovers and heroin users in: Gomart & Hennion (1998).

19. What I write here about panels engaged in tasting orange juice, comes directly from Méadel and Rabeharisoa (2001).

20. The question as to where the cultural-natural of the body might stop and the natural-natural start, cannot be answered: when you get close enough, the mixtures appear to go all the way through. See for instance the essays on pain in Good and Delvechio (1992).

21. See the beautiful study by Barbara Duden who tries to unearth and rearticulate the very physical sensations from the women who visited the doctor. She does not shift to ‘social constructivism’ but seeks to provide ‘flesh itself’ with a history (Duden 1991).

22. For the argument that technologies do not necessarily erode the body's self-awareness, but may increase it, see Willems (2000). For the exploration of into-sensing as an activity of a body that we do not have and are, but do, see Mol and Law (2004) .

23. In a discussion about the refusal of food by people with dementia that we analysed, doctors appeared to see food refusal as a symptom of the disease and ethicists as a non-verbal expression of people's will. The way out of that dichotomy was taken by nurses and nurse-assistants who tried to find out what the people concerned still liked to eat. To them, too, food was not nutrients, and eating not a matter of voluntary control. Instead, they cared for the interaction between tasting bodies and tasteful food. See Harbers et al. (2002).

24. For the question of how Westerners may learn to relate to others elsewhere see also Boltanski (1993) and the essays in Chatterjee (2004). For the argument that, when it comes to it, television soaps may be more helpful in acquiring the sensitivities that equip a citizen than ‘the News’, see Meijer (1998).

25. This experiment is part of a larger project in which I seek to learn ‘philosophy’, or rather new words and new theoretical repertoires, from practices to do with eating and drinking. See also Mol (2008b). With this project I build on my earlier attempts to more carefully attend to 'the body' and its specificities when engaging in political theory. See e.g. Mol (2008a). For a related argument see Law (1998).

26. See for this argument and for an attempt to positively engage in an aesthetics of taste, Korsmeyer (1999).

27. For the analysis of ‘good taste’ as a marker of class distinction, see Bourdieu (1986).