Paper short abstract:

Is ethical eating an alternative to capitalist consumption, or is it just plain old capitalism with a happy face? How has the Western infatuation with organic, ecological and local food redefined our ideas of traditional foodways? These two interrelated questions provide the focus for my examination of “biorexia”, a term that designates the complex of ideas, discourse and practices surrounding organic and ethical consumption.

Paper long abstract:

Is ethical eating an alternative to capitalist consumption, or is it just plain old capitalism with a happy face? How has the Western infatuation with organic, ecological and local food redefined our ideas of traditional foodways? These two interrelated questions provide the focus for my examination of "biorexia", a term that designates the complex of ideas, discourse and practices surrounding organic and ethical consumption.

Global ideas about local production, organic agriculture, and ethical consumption have made considerable impact on local food culture in Iceland. This sector of the food industry has grown dramatically, both internationally and in Iceland, as the consuming public grows increasingly concerned about the use of pesticides, hormones, and additives, and as awareness is raised of the working conditions of the people responsible for producing the food. In this lecture, I will explore the proliferation of ideas about ethical consumption in Iceland, a society otherwise marked by excessive consumption.

Moreover, I will consider how these global trends affect and reinvent the notion of traditional food, enhancing local flavors and giving value to traceability; giving to food products the name of a region, a farm or an individual producer. One way to read this is as a reversal in which the fear connected to food production has turned away from the natural to the social. Nature is no longer dirty, but pure, and other people are no longer guarantors of hygiene but sources of pollution and toxicity.