The Politics of Food: An Introduction 85constituted through a variety of social, cultural and political processes. When we
envisage food and diets as more or less ‘natural’, or argue for schemes of produc-
tion that are more (or less) sustainable or harmoniously adapted to our notions of
nature, we latch on to these debates, and thus find ourselves in a field which is
already highly charged with assumptions of a rather dubious kind. Bruno Latour
(1987) offers a way out by suggesting a symmetrical approach in which nature and
society are analysed on equal terms. In his analysis of modern practices of purifica-
tion and translation between nature and culture (Latour, 1993), he provides us with
a theoretical framework which is fruitful for understanding the hybrid nature of
food, and its contemporary oscillation between the natural and cultural domains.
Acknowledgements
Thanks go to Keith Hart and Brigitte Nerlich for their careful comments and
constructive criticism.
Notes
1 We do not argue that BSE in the only factor contributing to this awareness – several other food
scandals played a part. Nor do we argue that food distrust was caused by the BSE event in a
straightforward manner; in the UK such distrust had in fact been ‘simmering’ for years. What we
argue is that the case of BSE was significant, both in bringing about political change and in serv-
ing as a model for exposing controversies in media, even in countries that remained uncontami-
nated by the disease itself. In this way, it represents a case in which, afterward, things were never
quite the same.
2 Abstract relations refers both to the distance, socially, culturally and spatially, between production
and consumption, and to the processes of abstraction that characterize the ways in which suppli-
ers and consumers are made apparent to each other (through market surveys, sales statistics, and
through the emphasis on brand name at the expense of structures of ownership and agency in
food production, cf. Lien, 1997).
3 This is exemplified by the development of nutritional anthropology as a distinct subfield in the
US. In Europe, we find similar developments toward compartmentalization under the heading
‘anthropology of food’.
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