Practices of attention, possibilities for care

Making situations matter in food safety inspection

Bibliographic Data

ID3138625
AuthorsStephanie Lavau (0000-0001-8942-451X, The University of Melbourne, corresponding author), Nick Bingham (0000-0002-0037-9386, Open University, UK)
Year2017
Volume65
Issue2_suppl
Pages20-35
Publication date2017-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Sociological Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0081176917710526
OpenAlexW2726921105
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited29

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