Governing food Media, politics and pleasure

This thesis explores how the contemporary food movement uses food as a vehicle for social and cultural change, combining political concerns and pleasure in a form of ‘political hedonism’. Through a theoretical framework of governmentality and media studies the thesis investigates how the food movement has politicised food and how this has produced a discourse of ‘good food’, ‘eating right’ and ‘good citizenship’. Discourse analysis, furthermore, indicates how experts of the food movement aim to educate citizens about food by connecting knowledge, responsibility and pleasure. The analysis of three representative case studies –Slow Food Movement, Michael Pollan, and Jamie Oliver–demonstrates how the discourses about food produced by these experts are conveyed and mediatised by diverse (converging) media forms. The analysis of this mediatisation, finally, indicates that the politics of the contemporary food movement have become incorporated into a mainstream media and consumer culture. This has resulted in a hybridization of commercial interests and political or ethical values, which has created tensions in the discourses and images of the representatives of the food movement.