Consumption, pleasure and politics : Slow Food and the politico-aesthetic problematization of food

A growing field of research is documenting the political investment of the consumer. Yet, consumers are invested of political responsibilities in many different ways, which respond to different visions of politics and consumption, culture and the economy. In this article we critically explore the particular stance of an increasingly international actor such as Slow Food, placing it in the context of current debates on the scope of alternative food networks and on the moral boundaries of the market. Starting from the Slow Food core in Bra, Italy, and through a variety of qualitative sources, both primary (interviews) and secondary (publications, public speeches), we show that while Slow Food contributes to the current political investment of the consumer, it does so in distinctive ways which bear witness to its gastronomic origin and middle-class constituency. Slow Food rhetoric works out a politically-thick vision of taste refinement: its imagined consumer is an \u2018eco-gastronome\u2019, someone who adds ecological concerns onto a continuously trained aesthetic appreciation of food. The article considers the scope of what Slow Food has defined as the \u2018right to pleasure\u2019 in the face of a tension between inclusion and exclusion running through contemporary consumer culture. It concludes by exploring Slow Food\u2019s current shifts towards issues such as economic growth, access to resources and environmental protection \u2013 crucial in defining the complex world of critical consumption \u2013 through a politico-aesthetic problematization of food consumption