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This chapter aims to explore how supermarketization structure consumption of poor people and its sociocultural and moral consequences. In other words, this study expands the role of supermarketization in influencing consumer culture in Turkey.

An action research approach was used to analyze the in-depth interview data and field notes.

Before the supermarketization effect Turkish food retail industry was highly dominated by small, independent, and mostly family-owned single-location retailers: bakkal (neighborhood store which carries a wide range of both food and nonfood items with less than 100 square meters of floor space), manav (greengrocery), kasap (butcher), mandıra (dairy), fırın (bakery), and others. Bakkals – the focus of this research, make an analogy between the mushrooming of chain supermarkets and a cancerous tissue. The findings of this research reveal that not only in economic but also in social, moral, and cultural terms that these subaltern consumers cannot survive without bakkals.

The results of this research will provide some useful coping strategies for poverty confronting marketplace forces by reflecting on the grocery consumption patterns of subalterns. In addition, the findings will yield insights for unemployment among grocers by creating competitive advantage to maintain their existence against the influence of organized retailers.

Any contribution in poverty alleviation shall appease concerns about the role of poverty in fostering undesired consequences such as terrorism. Since poor consumers have scant resources and little education to develop a culture in more legitimized forms, it is likely that they become more vulnerable due to marketization effects on their sociocultural evolution.

Given the level of public interest in organized retailers and subaltern consumers, there has been surprisingly little research on both foreign- and domestic-organized retailers’ impact on traditional small size grocers and subaltern consumers. In addition, sociocultural and moral aspects of retailing and consequences of retailing activities, particularly, on subaltern consumers have not been fully explored.

This chapter evaluates the proliferation of supermarkets in developing countries using data collected between May 2005 and June 2006 in Citlalicalli, Mexico. Contrary to the experience of most developed countries, this study revealed that supermarkets and small retailers can coexist by catering to different income groups and product categories. Consumer choices are driven by the desire to reduce transaction costs in terms of time and money. In striking a balance between the two, consumers look for retail outlets that offer them the best value for their money with the least amount of time spent in shopping trips. Location of the store plays a critical role in buying choices that consumers make. In developing countries, generally, only high-income consumers can afford to own cars and choose to buy most products in supermarkets. Consumers without cars buy frequently purchased goods (foods) in small stores and infrequently purchased goods (consumer durables) in supermarkets.

Territorial food markets and governance have emerged as a key mechanism for the design and implementation new food systems and policies aimed at sustainable cities. However, the many existing policies tend to overlook the way food markets and supply strategies work. This chapter analyses governance in traditional agri-food markets in Brazil, aiming to demonstrate how, in different contexts, the economic interactions between actors are embedded in a set of social institutions (cultural values), which define modes of governance, participation in the markets and can be potential to fostering new (sustainable) rural-urban relations. These institutions challenge and compete with formal regulatory requirements imposed by the public authorities, which often disrupt and/or inhibit the development of local and traditional production and consumption practices, posing obstacles to the fostering rural-urban relations and the construction of solid local policies for food supply. Empirical data refer to three traditional Brazilian markets: the Feira do Pequeno Produtor in Passo Fundo, located in the South of Brazil, the Feira Central de Campina Grande and the Feira de Caruaru, both located in the Northeast of the country. The results point to the necessity and centrality to cities food supply policies recognise, encourage and institutionalise these markets traditional institutions in order to overcome supermarketisation and consolidate sustainable food systems. These process could be able to remove traditional markets from marginalise, promoting not only their survival, but their growth and consolidation as a source of decent work, healthy food and new sustainable rural-urban relationships.

Data on the food system's impact on environment, society and health point to a policy mismatch between current food consumption trends and long term viability. The role of public policy in this state of affairs requires critical attention. Public policy is generally weak and still dominated by a fixation on productionism and failing to integrate equally pressing concerns. Instead the facilitating power and responsibilities of the state are too often side-stepped. A new public policy approach is required that addresses the multi-criteria nature of how we assess contemporary food systems and their challenges. The role of the state is key to any transformation but states have been weak to support the creation of better infrastructure that would normalise what society and ecosystems really need namely sustainable diets from sustainable food systems. A genuinely systemic policy approach is required for urban populations, one which gives equal emphasis to all sector of food supply chains, not just primary production. The chapter explores ideological and practical logjams which hinder the pursuit of twenty-first-century progress. These include a reluctance to confront limitations in mainstream economics and uncritical acceptance of consumer power. Only the state has the potential legitimacy to facilitate a food system transformation and to provide the foundational economy which would normalise low impact living and eating.

This chapter provides a first systemic analysis of the environment in which small farms operate, hinging on the concept of ‘food system’. Food systems are not detached from the territory: an effective conceptualization must take into account the geographical dimension in which actors operate, originating material and immaterial flows. Thus food systems can be represented according to their functional elements, but also conceptualized and represented in their spatial dimension. This chapter provides a conceptualization of territorialized food systems, seen as a set of relations between actors located in a regional geographic space and coordinated by territorial governance (Rastoin, 2015). In the analysis of a food system in the context of a specific territory, geographical elements like distances, spatial distribution and physical and administrative borders become key factors that influence the systems’ capability to provide sustainable food and nutrition security and to achieve the other socially expected outcomes. Having explored the conceptualization of food systems as systems of actors ad flows in a given space, the chapter ends with a representation of small farms' interaction with the system (taken from a report by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security – HLPE), where the specific types of flows they activate are highlighted (HLPE, 2013).

Purpose – This chapter responds to the re-centering of agriculture and food in official forums and public discourse in the current crisis context.

Design – It re-examines the assumptions of the agrarian question through the lens of food regime analysis.

Findings – By examining these developments, particularly the recommendations of the IAASTD report, it is clear there is growing interest in the multifunctional conception of farming that is attentive to ecological and social sustainability.

Research implications – This rethinking is symptomatic of a transformation of the agrarian question: moving away from a concern with the political trajectory of capital in agriculture and the process of depeasantization, towards a concern with ‘peasant’ renewal. This registers an ontological shift towards an agro-ecological paradigm in which an ecologically driven conception of ‘value’ addressing social reproduction rather than capital accumulation is emerging.

Practical implications – New research on “repeasantization” undergirds this claim, and complements the global mobilization of small farmers around the project of food sovereignty. Practically, food sovereignty projects mean growing land rights claims and adoption of diverse forms of biological (rather than chemical) farming.

Social implications – This implies stabilizing rural populations and the possibility of health food and environments.

Value – Intellectually, such developments call for an analytical shift (in food regime and other analyses) towards values other than those of price and productivism in assessing the contribution of agriculture to human survival in a climate-challenged future.

The restructuring of food systems over recent decades has rightly received social scientific analysis. This paper argues that the public health implications of the cultural and production changes have received less attention. Yet, new health-oriented analyses offer a rich understanding of how societies have changed – in what they eat, why and how food is produced, whose health is affected and by what diseases. Health should be at the heart of social scientific thinking about food and farming. The case for a more integrated approach to food and farming, linking health, environment and society is strong.