I was standing in line along with dozens of young women like myself, decked out in vintage Levis and wicker baskets, waiting to purchase exorbitantly priced spray free vegetables at the Grey Lynn Farmers Market when I began to feel self conscious. Do any of us actually care? Or do we want to look like we do? Are the heirloom tomatoes grown in our back gardens and ceramic ‘keep cups’ filled with organic cold brew genuine efforts towards a more sustainable lifestyle, or just virtue signalling of the middle class? Its hard not be cynical.
Despite myself, I cant help but want to be a part of the urban dinner party Forest Pop Ups. With a similar ethos to the Crowd Grown Feast hosted in Silo Park in 2014, Forest Pop Ups serve small, considered, elegantly portioned dishes like ‘sunchoke tomatillo and pickled flowers’ and ‘spring onion chips with corn silk mayo’ for $87 a place. So out of my reach. As much as I would love to support locally grown food and resilience of supply in urban areas I don’t think this is it. Food is a right, food is humble, food is necessary.
I’ve met a couple of organisers and contributors to this event and I think they’re genuine people with good intentions. But food is too important to be overshadowed by aesthetics and the latest trends; after all, any movement that isn’t inclusive, will struggle to be radical. I think to make significant changes in our food system everyone has to feel like they have a seat at the table.
I like the point you brought up about ethically sourced food being overpriced and not accessible to all, despite how basic this necessity is. It is hard to find a balance between doing your part for the environment and being economically sustainable. I find that often times, organic foods and products are above my budget and question if the purchase is worth it? Will this one act of eco thinking make much of a difference for the environment? Would this money be better put into giving someone a meal? You’re right, this new wave of sustainable eating is expensive and not everyone can jump on the bandwagon as easily as others. To those who can afford to buy organic, fair trade, ‘clean’ food, who can follow through with sustainable eating, should we be doing this only ourselves or should we be bringing others up so that they can do the same?
I think the problem of virtue signalling is especially prevalent today. Many companies have coined on to the idea of packaging morality, selling a product for a slightly higher price so we can feel like we are doing our part for a certain cause, ie workers rights, the environment and so on. This is an idea often discussed by the Slovenian Cultural Critic Slavoj Zizek, he uses the example of a Starbucks coffee, where extra cost goes toward children in Guatemala or another cause. So in buying we not only buy the item but we buy the right not to feel guilty about our consumerism, the same goes for virtue signalling. When we publicly present ourselves as caring through our purchases we are trying to show others that care about the issues in the world, but really what is shown is that we have found away around the guilt that is complicit in capitalism. Thus instead of attempting to form communal movements to create systemic change, our internalisation of neoliberal hyper-individualisation has tricked us into buying more as a way of feeling moral. As a result we act less to fight injustice in the world. While undoubtedly these little actions are beneficial for the world, however is recycling going to change the fact that there are islands of plastic in our oceans, or that cycling will prevent oil drilling off the coast of Otago.
Hi ffar574! I’m not sure who you are but this was a great read.
What immediately grabbed me as I was looking through the 58 different posts under Art Schol 100 was your title. Having done my blog post on symbolism and food one of my key points was around identity, hence your idea of vanity for really connected with me.
In your blog post itself I really like the line “Do any of us actually care? Or do we want to look like we do?” You raised this in a discussion around ethical food and us as a society feeling like we need to ‘eat ethical’ to be ethical.
However we need to remember “Food is a right, food is humble, food is necessary”, and not all people have access to this basic right. So are these people unethical?
Thanks for the post!
I love this post Francesca, I think about this a lot to be honest. Charities, initiative and even philanthropy seems to me at times instruments that the upper class use when they recognise class struggle and feel bad about it, but ultimately don’t want to change their position as members of the upper class. They use charity and virtue signalling to pretend real change is happening because actual political policy change would possibly jeopardise their livelihoods. It is hard not to be cynical. And I’m one of them, I feel pretty special for owning a metal straw.
Sometimes I think even if the government even did implement policy change, that allowed for cleaner foods and more access to gardens, they’d be entirely out of touch with the people. There are towns in New Zealand hours away from any sort of shops or institutions and I don’t know how they’d react to the latest Nadia Lim boxes. I guess initiatives are more so by the people, for the people, but if it’s by the “elites”, sadly I don’t know how in touch it will really be, no matter how genuine.
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”