A concentration is a key piece of Lewis and Clark’s Environmental Studies Program and is designed by the student around a scholarly area of their interest.
My concentration is “Supermarkets.”
I believe that people are more likely to engage environmentally when they feel personally connected to an environmental problem. “Environment” can be defined as interactions between humans and the non-human things around them. Using this broad definition, food, eating, and cuisine are some of the most frequent and intimate ways people act environmentally. Our industrial agricultural system is dramatically changing environments, and the ways that people interact with them. One aspect of the system that interests me, in particular, is the supermarket.
Often taken for granted and unquestioned by the people who frequent them, supermarkets dictate the way millions of people interact with their environments. These interactions can be insidiously crafted. As Gail M. Hollander paraphrasing Michael Pollan’s description of “supermarket narratives” employed by retailers, explains, “accompanying changes in the food system are changes in advertising and marketing strategies, captured by the term, ‘supermarket narratives’, which are ‘stories about the ‘means of production’ that attempt to lend transparency in a ‘troubled and opaque … food system’” (Hollander, 60). She continues, “Marketing strategies that purport to reveal the social, moral and ecological relations of production in hidden spaces speak to and profit from consumers’ imagined geographies,” (Hollander, 60). This is an environmental issue. Because the industrial agricultural system operates globally, disconnecting shoppers from the process of production of the goods they consume (literally), their ability to understand the ways in which they interact with the environment is impaired.
Something that is not often included in products’ supermarket narratives is their environmental costs of production. In his piece, “The Oil We Eat” Richard Manning explains that “a two-pound bag of breakfast cereal burns the energy of a half-gallon of gasoline in its making. Altogether the food-processing industry in the United States uses about ten calories of fossil-fuel energy for every calorie of food energy it produces,” (Manning, 7). Environmental problems like fossil fuel use are not included in the narratives or prices of most supermarket products, and instead, qualify only as externalities. As the planet’s environment and climate continue to change under human influences, we have all the more reason to call seemingly mundane things, like supermarkets, into question, because they are a significant way in which people interact with their environments.
According to Kimenju et al., “Supermarkets are gaining ground in developing countries(8). In some countries, supermarkets have spread so rapidly that the term ‘supermarket revolution’ has been coined(9),” (Kimenju et al. 3224). Kimenju et al. continue, “The retail format has an influence on the types of products offered, as well as on sales prices and shopping atmosphere, which may affect consumer food choices(8,12–14). Compared with traditional retail formats, such as wet markets, smaller shops, and kiosks, supermarkets tend to have a wider variety of processed and highly processed foods and drinks, often in larger packaging sizes and combined with special promotional campaigns(1,9,10,12),” (Kimenju et al. 3224). The information Kimenju et al. list in the previous quote are examples of shifts in environmental interactions that occurred with the introduction of supermarkets. In an attempt to study the effects of changes in the way people consume, Kimenju et al. asked: “Do supermarkets contribute to the obesity pandemic in developing countries?” The authors concluded that supermarkets, regardless of factors like socio-economic status, education, physical activity level and other known determinants of BMI, increased probability of being overweight and obese among adults in Kenya. Interestingly, the authors found that “for children and adolescents, our data suggest that buying in supermarkets does not contribute to higher overweight and obesity. Rather, supermarket purchase tends to reduce child undernutrition through a positive effect on HAZ. Supermarkets also seem to reduce the probability of severe stunting,” (Kimenju et al. 3231). Supermarkets have been and are increasingly becoming a principal mediator in humans’ interactions with their environments. As humans continue to change and influence the planet’s environment and climate, mediators and their surrounding structures require examination.
Framing Questions
Descriptive
- How do supermarkets act as mediators between humans and the environment?
Explanatory
- Why is it important to examine supermarkets?
- What variables cause supermarkets to affect people differently?
Evaluative
- Do things like location, class and gender change how supermarkets affect people’s interactions with their environments?
- Do supermarkets affect different people differently?
Instrumental
- Are the ways in which people interact with their environments (through supermarkets) worth changing?
- How can we change the way we interact with our environments through eating?
Gorton, Matthew, Johannes Sauer, and Pajaree Supatpongkul. “Wet Markets, Supermarkets and the ‘Big Middle’ for Food Retailing in Developing Countries: Evidence from Thailand.” World Development 39, no. 9 (September 1, 2011): 1624–37.
Hollander, G. (2003). Re-naturalizing sugar: Narratives of place, production and consumption. Social & Cultural Geography, 4(1), 59-74.
Kimenju, Simon C., Ramona Rischke, Stephan Klasen, and Matin Qaim. “Do Supermarkets Contribute to the Obesity Pandemic in Developing Countries?” Public Health Nutrition 18, no. 17 (December 2015): 3224–33.
Lee, Joonkoo, Gary Gereffi, and Janet Beauvais. “Global Value Chains and Agrifood Standards: Challenges and Possibilities for Smallholders in Developing Countries.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 31 (July 31, 2012): 12326–31.
Marcoul, Philippe, and Luc Veyssiere. “A Financial Contracting Approach to the Role of Supermarkets in Farmers’ Credit Access.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 92, no. 4 (July 1, 2010): 1051–64.
Manning, Richard. (2004). The oil we eat: Following the food chain back to Iraq.(Essay). Harper’s Magazine,308(1845), 37.
Rao, Elizaphan J. O., and Matin Qaim. “Supermarkets, Farm Household Income, and Poverty: Insights from Kenya.” World Development 39, no. 5 (May 1, 2011): 784–96.
Reardon, Thomas, Spencer Henson, and Julio Berdegué. “‘Proactive Fast-Tracking’ Diffusion of Supermarkets in Developing Countries: Implications for Market Institutions and Trade.” Journal of Economic Geography 7, no. 4 (July 1, 2007): 399–431. “Supermarket Procurement Practices in Developing Countries: Redefining the Roles of the Public and Private Sectors | American Journal of Agricultural Economics | Oxford Academic.” Accessed October 10, 2018.
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Grace Anderson 