Meat As a Material of Food Activism: An Ethnographic Investigation of the Relationship between the Consumer and the Consumed.

Facilitating social interaction, integration and even empowerment, food is a commodity of community (Vivero-Pol, 2017). Public health nutrition research typically focuses on either the consumer or the consumed; the intricate relationships between the individual, their dietary practices and the food they eat is seldom explored. Further considering the role of food premises, equipment and transport, the diet is a complex entanglement of physical materiality and social phenomena.

Community, Culture and Meat Consumption is a doctoral research study investigating the cultural meanings of meat consumption. This highly immersive ethnography saw the researcher spend a year of fieldwork with the Birmingham Foodie Community; a network of food activists across the West Midlands (United Kingdom) working to address the social and environmental injustices of the global food system. From what initially appeared to the researcher to be a small group of engaged activists emerged a fast-growing community; a busy assemblage of thousands of individuals, premises, foodstuffs and community facilities. Physical materials were central to the sense of social inclusion, perceptions of authority in volunteering work and questions concerning the “ownership” of both the material assets and the community as a whole. It became apparent that the community was not merely a social network, but a unique entanglement of people, food and the many material resources that bought the two together. The researcher felt a strong sense of community membership and belonging, challenging the perceived dichotomy of materialism and inclusion.

This paper will examine the critical role of materiality in the Birmingham Foodie Community, with a focus on the function of territoriality and perceptions of ownership in the third sector. The value of food, and meat in particularly, as a commodity of community will be explored in relation to the complex sociocultural meanings of the diet.