A1 Journal article (refereed)
Banal Sustainability : Renewing the Cultural Norm of Not Wasting Food (2022)

Raippalinna, L.-M. (2022). Banal Sustainability : Renewing the Cultural Norm of Not Wasting Food. Ethnologia Europaea, 52(1), 1-23. https://doi.org/10.16995/ee.4804

JYU authors or editors

Raippalinna, Liia-Maria

Publication details

All authors or editors: Raippalinna, Liia-Maria

Journal or series: Ethnologia Europaea

ISSN: 0425-4597

eISSN: 1604-3030

Publication year: 2022

Publication date: 04/03/2022

Volume: 52

Issue number: 1

Pages range: 1-23

Publisher: Open Library of the Humanities

Publication country: United Kingdom

Publication language: English

DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/ee.4804

Publication open access: Openly available

Publication channel open access: Open Access channel

Publication is parallel published (JYX): https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/82164

Abstract

Recently food waste has been raised as a major sustainability problem: roughly one third of the food produced globally ends up lost or wasted. In this article, I analyse the ways interested citizens attach meaning to food waste reduction, based on eight qualitative interviews conducted with people attending a consumer education event in Helsinki in 2017. Adopting a discourse studies approach, I ask how the rationale of food waste reduction is constructed in the interviews. I present three discourses in which it is constructed and discuss a discursive change constructed in the data. I interpret the change as reconstituting the traditional cultural norm of not wasting food. It is connected to (hopes for) a wider sustainability transition and a related cultural change.

Keywords: sustainable development; sustainable consumption; food; food waste; cultural change; norms; ideals; discourse research