Everyone has to shop for groceries, unless you are a farmer, which most urban Americans are not. Being that I am a vegetarian, the way in which I interact with the supermarket might be a little different than most. I cannot just go to one store because most supermarkets such as Kroger or Schnucks do not offer the type of nutrition I need to maintain my protein, vegetable and fruit intake. Although such grocery stores as the ones aforementioned have installed designated spaces for vegetarian or organic items, they are paltry and don’t offer a variety such as other organic markets do.
While shopping, I am very selective because, like most, I am looking to find a bargain. One of the best vegetarian markets to shop at is Whole Foods, but with the great variety and quality they offer customers comes a high price. Therefore, I have to obtain most of my non-perishable items at Kroger and then traverse town to get my fresh veggies, fruits, and vitamins at Whole Foods.
My identity as a vegetarian at the grocery store cannot be concealed being that my basket is full with vegetables and meat substitutes, for all to see, nor can it be hidden when I am away from the store interacting in my daily life. For one thing, we all have to eat and when and where we do it plays a role in what we choose to consume. The grocery store is a technological agent that plays a role in the everyday relationship that I have to food.
As described in Culture + Technology, agency is a “process and a relationship” as opposed to the normative view of agency as a person who has the intention of obtaining an end goal through other agents or “tools”. Instead, technologies participate in our daily activities, which have a relationship to agency, and the type of technology chosen changes the ways in which we do things. For instance, one may see shopping at the grocery store as just that of obtaining food items, but the actual store, the particular technology, is a part of the experience. In my case, the store I choose effects the type-vegetarian- and quality of food I obtain, the price of the goods, healthiness or unhealthiness of the food bought (embodied or culturally perceived), the ways and the pace that I move around in the grocery social space, and the distance I travel to get there. In this way the grocery store as a technology is not just a “tool” that I use with a specific intention, but creates other factors that I might not have intended.
Technologies are also actors in a concept called Actor- Network Theory, which “involves the concepts of actors, translation, delegation, and prescription…” Michel Callon and Bruno Latour define an actor as “ any element which bends space around itself, makes other elements dependent upon itself and translates their will into a language of its own" (p.118). Likewise, the grocery store bends space around it when I use a shopping cart, create and carry my grocery list, bring in my re-useable shopping bags (if I remember to put them in my car). It also effects if I have additional elements at my home, such as a refrigerator, oven or microwave, and proper storage space.
Drawing from second part of Callon and Latour’s definition of actor, the grocery store is dependent upon people to purchase the items to keep the mechanism working and similarly, people are dependent upon the grocery store to supply the consumable goods for nourishment that we no longer produce ourselves. Thirdly, the market translates food into a mathematical language, a price tag. It also translates it into a certain type of food one that is culturally dominant. In my own case, food for carnivores or food that is culturally accepted as “food.”
Another component of Actor- Network Theory is delegation. In this view, we delegate a task for the supermarket to produce and handle the food so we don’t have to do it ourselves. I no longer do the work; instead the supermarket systematically does it for me. The supermarket prescribes certain habits and customs back to our bodies. Latour defines prescription as “the kind of delegation from technologies back to humans” (119). The supermarket prescribes back to us what food is. Whether it is a particular taste, a certain brand, a certain visual display or description on the box, food inscribes habits back to us through how we purchase and what we purchase.
I would have to agree with you that going to a certain grocery store effects the way I feel. I will drive down the street and go to Schnuks for certain items, but when I go to Fresh Market is when I really want to impress whomever I am cooking for. Where I buy depends on how fresh I feel the food may be. I also agree with you saying the market prescribes back to us what food is. Due to the supermarket simple things such as eggs and milk have became branded by their brand. I will not buy Kroger brand cheese!! Nasty, but I will buy Kraft?! Why? I have no idea. They are probably the same, but the supermarket effects the way I shop.
ReplyDeleteLike Melissa stated in her post, Grocery Stores are technologies rendered complacent to the actor-network theory. That is, we as individuals comprise networks in which we act as agents. As our text states, “Networks are maps of articulations, which at this point you might think of as connection” (CT, 121). Therefore the actor-network theory’s task is “ to discover how such networks get built, how they are maintained and transformed, how the articulations are made and unmade, and what qualities comprise those articulations” (CT, 121).
ReplyDeleteEssentially, grocery stores act as technologies of categorization. This models modern science, as our text notes, making technologies rational, ordered and morally superior. In my experience, grocery stores represent order specifically in terms of categorization. Growing up as a daughter of a food salesman, I spent many days of my childhood at “store sets.” Essentially, these “store sets,” reorganized the store and categorized products into optimal categories of rationale and logic. I remember my father working tirelessly on blue prints stapled next to inventory print outs and sales statistics in order to prepare for what was to me, a simple “store set.” Not to say that I did not appreciate my father’s effort in feeding/housing/clothing me but I never quite understood the logic of any grocery store I entered. There was an aspect to “store sets,” that I, to put eloquently, did not get. While I, as a child, was not aware of the actor-network theory and the fundamentals of business, I now see that my father articulated an identity for each store through his work.
Looking back today, the hours spent at Piggly Wiggly and Big Star represented a facilitating approach to technologies as profit-making machines through promotion of logic and rationale, for example. My father helped “maintain and transform” the networks of the grocery industry acting as an agent in furthering this network. Through his well-thought-out plans and blueprints, which were ultimately articulated as sales earnings, acted to aid the technology of grocery stores through rational and ordered means.