Japanese Journal of Cultural Anthropology
Online ISSN : 2424-0516
Print ISSN : 1349-0648
ISSN-L : 1349-0648
Special Theme: Food as an Intersection of Culture and Body: From the Earth to Tongue
Who Eats the Vegetables I Produced?
Turning Commodities to "Food" and Extending the Concept of Subsistence
Atsuki Inoue
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2020 Volume 85 Issue 3 Pages 484-504

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Abstract

This paper discusses the possibility of demonstrating the relationship between producers and consumers from the perspective of anthropology, taking the management behavior of a specific agricultural producer (hereafter referred to as "producer") in contemporary Hokkaido, Japan, as an example. Specifically, I analyze the process by which producers re-recognize agricultural products and commodities as "food" through direct interaction with consumers. In doing so, I will use the concept of peasants, which has been reevaluated worldwide in recent years, and of subsistence.

The following is the result of a case study analysis of the producer who practiced industrial agriculture but sympathized with different values of peasants. It was deduced that the urgent sense of survival of consumers seeking "food" rather than the producer himself, that is, the demands of others to satisfy the subsistence, encouraged changes in the behavior of the producer. The extension of the concept of subsistence could be an auxiliary line for understanding the behavior of producers in industrial agriculture from an anthropological point of view.

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2020 Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology
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