Geographies of Consumption: A Moral Economy of Milk in New Zealand

Abstract

This thesis creates an analytical lens that examines consumption and production in the same realm. That is, it aims to reduce the distance that Jackson, Ward & Russell (2009) argue exists between producers and consumers resulting in a fractured food systems which ultimately sees the lives experience of food inherently different for people over the globe. Current food literature argues that food can tell us everything we seek to know. Food is “molecular, bodily, social, economic, cultural, global, political, environmental, physical and human geography simultaneously” (Cook, 2006: 656). Food stories therefore can reveal greater insight as a result of delving further into the mundane and intimate aspects of ordinary people’s lives; this helps in exposing and untangling the big issues of twenty-­first century politics (Watson and Caldwell, 2005: 1-­2). This research will explore how structural dynamics of food relations and how they shape what we eat within New Zealand by following milk from the cow to the table. The account will unearth the hidden stories that define a moral economy of milk. By following milk along its journey I will uncover the ways in which it interacts with an extensive number of places, spaces, people and embodied experiences. Not surprisingly, the story of New Zealand milk is heavily influenced by the presence of Fonterra and this work will highlight the role of Fonterra in shaping what New Zealand eats (Cook & Harrison, 2007). This thesis uses notions of following to re-­embed the dairy industry in it social relations of work and consumption and thus to put a politics and ethics ‘back into’ market exchanges and the notion of the commodity or value chain that normalize the disembedded commodity economy. It argues that by exploring the way Fonterra structures the social relations of dairy in New Zealand, this research uncovered some of the wider issues that surround the consumption practices of every New Zealander. Questions about food such as where it was grown, by whom, and at what natural or social resource cost are often not included in the decision making process behind most people’s food choices. My approach brings these questions back into focus.