Resetting the Australian table: Nutrition-sensitive value chains through a gender lens

19 August 2015

Jane Dixon

The changing chicken: chooks, cooks and culinary culture

Women in value chains: OECD

From household egg producers and occasional poultry producer to a ‘global dictator’ as ‘consumption has become the vanguard of history’ (Miller 1995: 1-9)

‘In the practices of consumption the commodity system is exposed to the power of the consumer’ (Fiske 1991: 31)

BUT, consumption as ‘housewifery’ (managing the household moral economy) is mediated by her wages, time left after earning, community-wide gender relations and an absence of market place choice (Dixon 2002: Ch.2): ‘freed from the kitchen to be chained to the wheel’

Value dynamics

Economic valuations: company/stockmarket value, profits, payroll/wages, prices (what the market will bear)

Cultural valuations: market-standards (competition, risks), community norms, product brands, firm reputation/status …

Value dynamics involves taking cultural values as an input/resource to add economic value + inserting economic values to add cultural value – cultural and economic circuits interweave (Lash and Urry 1994: Economies of signs and space)

‘The social life of things’

Where does this thing come from? How does its life become more or less valuable? Who makes the value? How does the thing’s value change? (Appadurai 1996) Useful for posing questions re. value-adding processes

The social life of the Australian chicken, or value dynamics

1950s and 1960s: Bird breeding R&D, mass production R&D, cool chains

1970s: Grower organisation & labour relations 1980s: Marketing and distribution- supermarket supply

chains 1970s – 2000: Consumer involvement in value-adding 1980s – onwards: Public and private regulation to

protect economic value for key actors and to protect consumer health (Dixon 2002)

Cultural value adding of the 4Cs: key role of supermarkets

Cheap Convenient Choice Cleanliness

2011 2011 1966

Labour force participation trends

‘Acquiring a taste for the necessary’

‘one only has to ask the question which economists strangely ignore, of the economic conditions of the production of dispositions demanded by the economy, ie … the question of the economic and social determinants of tastes’ (Bourdieu 1984:101)

Cultural practices are ‘disciplined’ and ‘recuperated’ by

events in the economic sphere (Warde 2002)

Tempos of modern life

Space-time compression – exposure to globalisation through labour, commodity & financial markets, new media, travel

Female labour force participation upends domestic routines (daily food provisioning & home cooking)

A ‘culture of convenience’ (Ulijazsek 2007 ) = ‘The capacity to shift, juggle and re-order episodes and events’ (Shove 2003, p. 170)

Urbanism overwhelms ruralism: novelty displaces habit Reflexive consumption: caring for self, others, non-

humans, the planet BUT CONTRADICTIONS

Cheap & healthy convenience

Health: the ‘heavy trend’ Share of the urban passenger transport task: car dependent

00.10.20.30.40.50.60.70.80.9

1

1945

1955

1965

1975

1985

1995

2005

2015

Sh

are

(P

ro

po

rtio

n) Car

Rail

Other(incl. bus)

Adapted from Bureau of Transport Economics (1999)

Women in poultry value chains

An overwhelmingly high income country Anglo-centric perspective

Women contribute to poultry value chains through being poultry farm co-owners and process workers, but principally as household managers, carers, consumers and moral economy custodians