Paper short abstract:

This paper explores food storage as means to study sustainable food practices, and thus perceptions of sustainability, in a contemporary and historical perspective. It investigates the potential of researching stories and practices related to sustainability by turning to fridges and cupboards.

Paper long abstract:

Multiple ethnographical food and kitchen related studies focus on the social setting and the food consumption, but few have paid attention to the actual storage unit in a cultural and household context (for exceptions see e.g. Shove and Southerton 2000). The fridge as a material vessel both tell and contain multiple stories about food culture. As materiality it tells the history of refrigeration and changes in food consumption (Rees 2013). As an interviewing prop it can generate fridge stories when exploring perceptions and practices in a household context (Joosse 2014, Marshall forthcoming). Additionally, folklife archives and governmental research institutions (e.g. Boalt 1964) contain documentations of food storage units and their contents and thus offer insights to how people have organized their food and to how the storage practices have changed over time.

In a time where sustainability has become an influential narrative in society, this paper aims to explore how food storage can be used to study sustainable food practices - and thus perceptions of sustainability - in a contemporary and historical perspective. It departs from findings from my PhD dissertation on sustainable food practices in everyday life and on initial ideas for a potential research project.

Questions I wish to explore are: What storage practices have been adopted, altered, abandoned and resurrected since the accessibility of refrigeration for the general public? Which stories have so far been untold? And how do ideas of sustainability relate to storage practices?