A corporeal geography of consumption

Abstract

In this paper I outline a corporeal geography of consumption. By using the example of food I explore how our bodies are linked to wider consumption spaces and the ways that they are inflected by these sociospatial relations. Although discourses around eating in western cultures tend to privilege self-discipline, there are other meanings around food that emphasise its pleasurable qualities. Because our bodies are a product of the complex interaction of different discourses, social relations, and practices constituted in relation to wider locations, including other bodies, the home, and the workplace, these constellations of relationships do not always serve to produce our bodies in a coherent way. I therefore explore some of the tensions and conflicts individuals experience between different discourses around food, bodily ideals, and sets of regulatory practices in different locations. In doing so I consider the extent to which individuals produce the space of their bodies in accordance with the disciplinary gaze of others rather than their own desires. I suggest that close spatial proximity to others can result in the erosion of individuals' body boundaries, and argue that the lack of corporeal freedom experienced by those interviewed highlights the limitations of public information and discourses about healthy eating, which are usually targeted at individuals and assume individualised patterns of consumption, rather than recognising the way that food consumption is often a shared activity and that bodily practices are therefore inflected by wider sociospatial relations.