Supermarkets: A Workshop to Discuss an Emerging Field of Study

Prof Harry G. West, Dr. Michael Goodman, Dr. Emma-Jayne Abbots, and Dr. Ben Coles

While the growth of supermarkets, and the vertical integration of the food trade with which they are associated, has done as much as anything over the last century to shape the contemporary human experience of food, from its production to its consumption, supermarkets remain under-examined in the social science and humanities literature. What little has been written has often contributed to polemicized debates about the place of supermarkets in local, national and global food systems, largely failing to document and engage analytically with the complex and contradictory relationships between supermarkets and those who supply them, own, manage or work for them, shop in them, and compete with them at every point along the food chain.

The workshop will bring together people in the social sciences and humanities who share an interest in supermarkets as an object of study. The workshop will comprise brief presentations by a selection of researchers outlining their interests in supermarkets as an object of study and posing short sets of questions that might animate their future work. Following each presentation, other participants will comment on the presenter’s proposed project, suggesting alternative ways of framing the research, noting relevant bodies of literature, sources and contacts, and above all identifying synergies with their own interests. The goal of the workshop will be to give foundation to a social science- and humanities-based research network focused on the study of supermarkets.