Abstract

What is 'good food'? Is it fair trade, local, organic or ethically produced? With an ever-expanding array of products and 'qualities' to consider, consumers in the global North may find it increasingly difficult and time-consuming to make the 'right' choices. As a result, a range of intermediaries, including food apps and collective buying groups, are emerging to support and influence people with their food choices. While intermediation refers to all activities linking producers and consumers, this paper narrows the focus and considers one important, yet poorly understood, intermediary function within the food marketplace: 'curation'. Although the concept of curation has long been associated with museums and art worlds, curatorial practices are evolving in the contemporary marketplace and are performed by a growing range of actors operating in physical, temporary and virtual spaces. Rather than acting as brokers or gatekeepers, curators interpret, translate and shape the marketplace by sorting, organising, evaluating and ascribing value(s) to specific products. They also offer general and personalised recommendations to consumers. Although the literature on local food privileges the direct relations between producers and consumers, this paper considers the important role of intermediaries. Drawing on interviews and participant observation in Sweden it contributes to the existing literature on curation by examining the spatial dynamics and nature of curatorial practices, the motivations behind them and the values they create for consumers. The findings demonstrate that a range of activities can be understood as curation and that in order to nuance and extend existing conceptualisations of curation a wider and more dynamic range of actors (food apps), spaces (blogs) and values such as inspiration, convenience and sense of community need to be considered. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords

Curation; Intermediaries; Local food; Spatial dynamics; Value(s)

Published in

Geoforum
2015, Volume: 64, pages: 205-216
Publisher: PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD

UKÄ Subject classification

Economic Geography
Human Geography
Sociology (excluding Social work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.06.024

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/84329