Organic Food, Aesthetics and Distinction: Farmers' Markets Displays in Shanghai
In this paper I shed light on the tensions between small, uncertified organic farmers in Shanghai and their collaborators who help them market produce. In the face of increasing food safety concerns in China, many people are opting out of the conventional food system including former white collar professionals who have abandoned urban, middle-class lifestyles to grow their own organic produce. Many of their customers are also consumers who have chosen to opt out of the conventional food system through their consumption. In China the price of organic produce can be up to sixteen times more expensive than conventional food. Thus, organic food is mainly affordable to middle-class consumers or above. These consumers also have demands regarding aesthetics and presentation that distinguishes the goods they consume from other goods. The centre managers at the shopping centre where the farmers gathered every Saturday to sell their produce expected the produce to be displayed in a style that was more similar to produce displays in a boutique food shop rather than the more rustic displays preferred by the farmers. Based on 12 months of ethnographic research in Shanghai, I show that the tensions over the aesthetics of the farmers’ produce at the market reflect the conflict between the demands of middle-class Chinese consumers who desire to be aesthetically distinct from other consumers of lower social class, and the farmers who have abandoned lives aspiring to such distinctions.
Key Words: Organic food, Farmers’ Markets, Distinction, Shanghai, Small Farmers
Leo Pang is an Independent Scholar. Leo holds a PhD in Anthropology from SOAS and an MPhil in Anthropology from The Chinese University of Hong Kong as well as a Graduate Diploma of Gastronomy from the University of Adelaide. His main research interests are food and globalization, and sustainable food producers and farmers’ markets
As well as talking about Leos presentation in the chat below, please join in a live Zoom session with Leo 4:00 pm Saturday 18th July ZOOM LINK
Thanks Beverly! Glad you enjoyed the presentation and got something out of it.
Thanks for this paper, I loved listening to your observations about class and social value, ideals of neatness and city vs country aesthetic. I sometimes wonder about these questions in markets, sometimes knowing there's a code there I can't decode. Interesting!
Hello Jean. Thanks so much for this. Very useful! I can only think of Pink who did some research on cleanliness, but I haven't read her work yet too.
Melanie, if you haven't already,I think you could look at some of the urban planning literature on planned villages (eg Bourneville, Birminham) in which tidyness is equated to tidy minds (with clean, tree-lined streets etc meant to uplift the morality and hygienic practices of the working classes). From more popular perspectives, i think the current wave of Marie Kondo-type writing on domestic tidying might be useful too.
Thanks so much for the literature. I've always been looking for where to start with this aesthetic of neatness (but more thinking about gardens, agriculture, cleanliness in general). Yes see you at the Q and A then.
Very interesting Leo. I want to hear more about your thoughts or literature you encountered about neatness (in this context) as aesthetic. Has this been mostly an elite/urban aesthetic so as the opposite is considered backward/country? Sometimes I feel it's a Western aesthetic as it contrasts so much with the Philippine aesthetic that can also be obviously seen in wet markets. Also, love to hear more about your dissertation in the QandA session.
Fantastic fieldwork Leo and a great presentation. Thanks so much for these insights into this Shanghai farmers' market.
Interesting to hear of the explicit social and cultural distancing from wet markets.
Are there many of these farmers' markets in Shanghai? Do you think they're becoming an integral part of the middle-class shopping mall or is this example still an exception? Have farmers' markets become a must-have "accessory" to the middle-class? (Like they have in Melbourne....)
Hi Nikki, I think the same thing happens here ( in Australia) in class terms anyway, except we don’t have such a clearly defined “expat” category as you do. I’m also interested in the way “alternative” foodways have become invested with meanings of “distinction” - raw/organic/vegan and are no longer simply the property of “feral” etc communities.
Interesting presentation. It made me think about the farmers markets/specialty markets and weekend markets vis a vis the wet markets that I visit and I do notice that the specialty markets attract the expats and members of the upper class, thus, these markets have an air of "international, healthier, authentic" feel, for special ingredients or special dishes while wet markets are visited by household help who would purchase food for everyday consumption. Its true that the display, presentation of food have meaning- politics and social aspects of food.
Hi again, Leo, i’ll make a note of that chat session. I’m Adelaide- based with most of my extended family in sydney. I usually visit regularly but unfortunately we are well and truly in lockdown ( both because Im seemed old and by border patrol decree.)WatchingnWar of the Worlds on telly and it feels
just like that. Anyway, let’s catch
up on the screen. I want to hear more about your project. That’d be great.
Hi Leo, I found this a fascinating paper with a number of unusual twists eg middle class urban people becoming farmers and, in the case of Sister Wang, resisting imposed rules of propriety. There’s a lot of subtle nuances in your account, no doubt helped by your extended period of ‘hanging out” at the market as well as your well- trained anthropological eye. I was interested in your comment about messiness in relation to storage boxes as in my own work in Marseille, such boxes are seen as an “authentic” sign of the outdoor market ( maybe more so than mythic references through checked tablecloths and tractors). Love to talk with you more about all this.
Great paper Leo, thank you. Sociologically this talk was fascinating. The principles apply to a lesser degree to farmers' markets on the Gold Coast, where the diversity of organic markets held on a school ground through to markets held in a shopping centre have markedly different levels of aesthetic curation.
Interesting study Leo. There is a lot of diversity in the presentation of the stalls at my local Farmers' Market. Also, market shoppers are looking for different things - for example a well packaged local gift to take home for a tourist or, the weekly spuds for a local. Mostly, the product sells itself not the fancy packaging! While lock down was underway in SA, our local Farmers' Market organised 'pick up boxes' (fantastic service to support our local producers) and we noticed we spent a lot less money. Now we are market shopping ourselves again and we are back to spending more, the only difference is the way the market is run, which continues to practise social distancing, hand hygiene (everywhere) and paying by card not cash!
Nice project Leo! Like many farmers, primary producers and other small business owners they are good at the actual work but marketing and customer service is another kettle of fish and do not necessarily come naturally. They need some simple marketing tips and tricks which the corporate shopping centers could easily help them with you’d think.
Nice project Leo! Like many farmers, primary producers and other small business owners they are good at the actual work but marketing and customer service is another kettle of fish and do not necessarily come naturally. They need some simple marketing tips and tricks which the corporate shopping centers could easily help them with you’d think.
Thanks Leo, as much as I used to love shopping at the wet markets in Hong Kong, for the variety and general liveliness, my preference moved to a safer food source. Unfortunately it was pre-farmers market. I think though the aesthetic of the Shanghai market would have been improved by removing the plastic packaging.
And yet, what I am drawn to in a farmer's market is more anarchic abundance. It's interesting that the same curated 'rusticity' appears all over the world, but it is so often anodyne and ineffectual. I maintain there is such a thing as artistic messyness that can look delightful :-) I want to see seasonal glut, and colour, and overflowing gorgeousness. In amongst it, I want there to smaller hidden treasures that draw me in close. It's funny though -the rejection of middle-class aesthetics really does cross fields. Vege gardeners usually fall into either 'military rows' of 'permaculture food forests' (and nothing between), and then there's those that take immense pride in ditching physical appearance mores (and often simultaneously despise those who are still 'trapped' in the system). I love that your presentation addressed and linked all those dichotomies!
I enjoyed this insight. Certainly, food origin, type, and aesthetic presentation has become firmly fixed as a marker of status/class identity/ brand, across broad cultural boundaries. This appears to be emerging as a sub-theme (in varying degrees) within the papers I have read to date.
Thanks very much, Leo. Very interesting. I wonder if you can say a little bit more about the aesthetics - did the farmers see a more rustic display as an aesthetic or was it seen as more convenient or better for selling? In the UK, it has been argued that customers buying organic food boxes like to see soil on their veg as it makes them feel it is properly 'rural' and authentic. How is rusticity seen by the Shanghai-ese middle classes?
Interesting fieldwork. What a threat, "Take thee to the mezzanine!"
You mention that these organic farmers are uncertified. Was that by choice?