English to Italian Social Sciences Social Science, Sociology, Ethics, etc. Inquinamento alimentare

Drawing on the theory of risk society, I show that Palermitans opposed organic to conventional foods on the basis of notions of healthiness and contamination, choosing organic to avoid ingesting harmful substances. However, concerns about food quality were not their sole motivation. Eating organics was also seen as a way to reduce risks from the local urban setting. This double risk burden, of diet and environment, reflects a view of pollution as pervasive, typical of the environmental movement. I thus suggest that the spatial properties of pollution play an important role not only in explaining people’s food anxieties, but also the attractiveness of organics, which is seen as a food capable of transgressing spatial domains in a positive way.

The article is organized as follows. In the next section, I discuss the theoretical background to the argument. The second section deals with the methodology and provides the reader with ** background to the case study **. Section three, which begins the substantive analysis, describes Palermitans’ lay understandings of food risk in relation to organics.