14 - Consumption: Advancing Postcolonial Perspectives from the Global South

Summary

Introduction

Studies of spaces of consumption have long been positioned at the intersection of economic and cultural geography, embracing the interplay between industry and commerce and the lifeworlds through which goods and services are purchased, used and experienced. Since the 1990s we have witnessed the development of multidisciplinary and critical consumption studies through a period of neoliberalization when the global economy has been significantly market led (see Chapter 12 in this volume). Geographical studies of consumption have been a part of this field, exploring the spaces through which goods and services are marketed, purchased and incorporated into daily life, as well as addressing the practices and spaces of disposal and discard (Crewe, 2011; Mansvelt, 2014; Meah and Jackson, 2017). Economic geographers have played a role in mapping and conceptualizing the commodity chains linking consumers with local, regional and global systems of production, as well as understanding landscapes of retail and household economies (Mansvelt, 2014; Hall, 2015; Lane and Mansvelt, 2020).

Spaces of consumption in the Global North have tended until recently to be centre stage in geographies of consumption, and Western concepts and practices have dominated analysis (Crang and Hughes, 2015). This chapter seeks to unsettle dominant narratives of consumption driven by Western framings. We suggest that perspectives of postcolonial economy can help to foreground more inclusive and diverse geographies of consumption and theorization from Global South settings. To demonstrate this, we take food as our focus and examine changing discourses of food consumption in Brazil. We concentrate on food justice discourses emerging during the 12 years of left-wing government from 2003. With 24.7 per cent of the population living in poverty (IBGE, 2020) and 10.3 million people affected by hunger and malnutrition (IBGE, 2020), Brazil is usually portrayed in terms of its long history of hunger when discussing food consumption. However, the intention here is to use a postcolonial lens to broaden the analysis of domestic food consumption in Brazil, revealing its plural contingencies and histories.

Plural perspectives on geographies of consumption

Social science research has developed critical perspectives on consumption as material culture (Miller, 1998; Gregson and Crewe, 2003), with food featuring prominently (Mansvelt, 2014; Jackson, 2015).