Practices of attention, possibilities for care

Making situations matter in food safety inspection

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3138625
AutoresStephanie Lavau (0000-0001-8942-451X, The University of Melbourne, autor de correspondencia), Nick Bingham (0000-0002-0037-9386, Open University, UK)
Año2017
Volumen65
Número2_suppl
Páginas20-35
Fecha de publicación2017-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Sociological Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0081176917710526
OpenAlexW2726921105
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas8
Referencias citadas29

In this article the authors explore how attention and care are related in practice, as encountered in their ethnographic fieldwork on food safety inspection in the UK. Noting that there is a tendency to conceptually conflate the two activities within recent literatures, the authors tease apart the attention and care of inspection to propose that attention offers the conditions of possibility for care, and that its quality can shape that care in significant ways. Attention in this account does not involve simply a visual culture of surveillance, but includes the diverse range of sensory, bodily engagements through which the situations of animal and food production are made to matter. The study explores how three aspects of this version of attention - ecological, economical and educational - interact at a moment of significant regulatory change to leave key methods of supporting and improving the situations of food businesses vulnerable and difficult to sustain. The article concludes by reflecting on the general and specific implications of this way of thinking about attention for how care in policy practice is understood, valued and protected

Conflation · Epistemology · Ethnography · Food safety · Quality (philosophy · Sociology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Medicine · Psychology