From counterculture movement to mainstream market: emergence of the US organic food industry

This chapter considers the potential for research that reconsiders boundaries commonly established between consumers and consumption environments. The chapter questioned recurrent dualistic categories that feature both in consumer culture and in consumer-culture theory. The chapter examines what dualisms are used for in market contexts, before specifically exploring human/non-human and nature/culture dualisms in consumer research. This chapter takes a dualism to represent: first, the relationship between two opposing and ontologically separate categories that people draw on as linguistic devices to understand, give meaning and represent their life worlds; and second, a mode of theory building reliant on the categorical interplay between binaries. Dualisms are common feature es of everyday consumer cultures. The aim of this questioning is to generate different ways to think about markets and consumer cultures. Finally, the chapter consider the case for retaining dualisms, by acknowledging how they may feature differently in consumers' and consumer researchers' knowledge-making practices