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Paper short abstract

Narrated through comics that cast food as an actor, this project draws on ethnography of Vienna’s social markets to explore how food shifts identity across spaces, mediating neoliberal welfare, moral economies, and practices of social and spatial exclusion.

Paper long abstract

With my comics, I tell a reciprocal story: the end of one food item is the beginning of another. The same piece of food changes its identity quickly and radically, depending on where it is placed and which people surround it. It can be touched, evaluated, ignored, desired, protected, or thrown away. In these comics, food is not just an object but an actor: a tourist, a soldier, a weapon, a poison, and a tool shaped by ideologies, politics, and policies.

The project is based on my ethnographic research on social markets in Vienna - special supermarkets for low-income people where expired food is sold at reduced prices. In this system, food moves from an “ordinary” supermarket to a hybrid space that imitates a regular shop but functions under different rules. This movement is often framed through ideas of sustainability and care, yet it also produces separation, control, and unequal access.

One narrative follows a lemon trying to understand itself. Once unwanted and invisible in a regular supermarket, it becomes valuable and desirable in a social market, where strict rules regulate how many items can be taken and who may touch them. The lemon does not understand why it is suddenly protected, restricted, and watched.

Through this story, I explore how food constantly shifts between value and waste, care and neglect. By telling ethnographic research through comics, I aim to show how food mediates emotions, power, dignity, and exclusion in everyday life. (I can send comics if requested).