It’s never too late to join the revolution! – Enabling new modes of production in the contemporary Danish food system

ABSTRACT

The Danish food system has undergone a transition in the past 10–20 years, in which new quality conventions have evolved. Examples include increasing organic production and consumption, and increasing interest in local food, experience, community, taste and gastronomy. This article explores what influences if and how these new food trends are expressed in the food system. We conduct a comparative case study involving three product categories: craft beer, specialty flour and organic broilers. Craft beer and specialty flour have undergone a revolution, in which new flavours, products, practices and social relations are generated; by contrast, organic broilers have remained a relatively stable product category. The case studies demonstrate that the revolution is not just taking place in one domain, but it implies a multidimensional reconfiguration of the food system where an emphasis on multiple quality aspects and diversification of the product category is important. However, food trends are not the invention of the individual producer, but serve as common conventions that products can be related to, although their interpretation is not pre-given. In addition, a transition presupposes a shared vision and a coordination of activities among the actors in the food system or the mobilization of new actors who share this vision.     

“Everybody is Centennializing”: White Southerners and the 1876 Centennial

The one hundredth anniversary of American independence was celebrated with a huge world’s fair or “International Exhibition” in Philadelphia, commonly referred to as “The Centennial,” a central theme of which was post-bellum reconciliation. This article argues that the Centennial served as a catalyst for reflection about sectional distinctiveness. It examines the highly politicized discourse around the commemoration, the ways in which white southerners’ self-definition was bound up in perceived differences from their Northern counterparts and the extent to which exaggerated or re-affirmed southerness in reaction to the Centennial detracted from post-war affirmations of renewed American nationalism.