Lay Immunology, Local Foods and Rural Identity

Defending Unpasteurised Milk in England

Bibliographic Data

ID4446121
AuthorsGareth Enticott (0000-0001-5510-9597, University of Wales Institute Cardiff, corresponding author)
Year2003
Volume43
Issue3
Pages257-270
Publication date2003-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociologia Ruralis (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0199 • E-ISSN: 1467-9523
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1467-9523.00244
OpenAlexW1990371104
LanguageEN
Citations received26
References cited31

Recent policy statements on the future directions for agriculture have expressed the importance of the alternative food economy in promoting rural sustainability and improving public health. This paper suggests that these aims can prove incompatible. Alternative constructions of health and safety are likely to resist official discourses of healthy eating as a result of 'lay immunologies' and different cultures of nature. A Ministry of Agriculture consultation exercise on the consumption of unpasteurised milk is analysed to show how people living in rural areas situate health in particular versions of nature to cure and immunise the body from illness. These lay immunologies reconfigure the boundaries of purity/impurity by emphasising the importance of nature, bacteria, dirt and rawness in promoting health. This view is also deeply embedded in notions of rural identity and 'defensive localism'. Scientific recommendations to purify foods are therefore resisted as an erosion of rural identity

Aesthetics · Agriculture · Business · Christian ministry · Consumption (sociology) · Geography · Identity (music) · Localism · Political science · Rural area · Social science · Sociology · Sustainability · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Food Waste Reduction and Sustainability · Law · Organic Food and Agriculture

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