Go Home Jamie: reframing consumer choice
Developing arguments originally set out in Maps of Meaning (Jackson, 1989) this provocation challenges current framings of 'consumer choice' where individuals and families (and working class mothers in particular) are held to account for the consequences of their dietary decisions; where a deficit model is applied to debates about cooking skills and parenting practices; and where media celebrities like Jamie Oliver take it upon themselves to 'teach a town to cook' It is argued that these positions are ideological in character, invoking moralized judgements about contemporary consumer practice and raising questions about what Massey (2004) refers to as 'geographies of responsibility' Starting with an analysis of the ideological 'maps' that underpinned a key moment in Jamie's Ministry of Food (broadcast in 2008) the paper explores the way these ideologies have informed a new cultural politics of food, associated with the current 'age of austerity' The paper also draws out the spatialities of these issues in terms of the way they (re)constitute the domestic sphere of everyday food consumption as a specific site of struggle.1