Untangling the Web of Food, Class, and Culture: An Ethnographic Analysis of the Farmers’ Market in Lexington, Kentucky

This paper examines the concept of class, the role power plays in defining class structures,and the implications of this process of construction within the context of food consumption. Both power and class are embedded in historical frameworks that this paper explores through an ethnographic analysis of the Farmers’ Market in Lexington, Kentucky. The research raises questions on the definitions of nature and organic food, the role of the economy within this process of defining, how these definitions come to serve as an embodiment of power, and the consequences for those who can afford neither organic food, nor the lifestyle that has come to accompany it. In addressing these questions, this paper seeks to historicize the construction of the organic food industry by exploring a more fluid, rather than essentialist, approach to the subjectivities that emerge within the industry while providing a context for exploring the otherwise limited perceptions of class and organic food. Through an anthropological lens, this paper attempts to deconstruct the Farmer’s Market, organic food, culture, and class-driven inequalities