Research Week Event: Public Lecture by Dr Michelle Phillipov
Celebrity Chefs, Consumption Politics and Food Labelling: Exploring the Contradictions
Dr Michelle Phillipov, University of Tasmania
Tuesday 30 August, 5.30pm to 6.30pm, Harvard Lecture Theatre 1, Centenary Building, Sandy Bay Campus
This seminar examines the media campaigns of British celebrity chefs Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall that promote ‘free range’ chicken and eggs as more ethical, sustainable and desirable alternatives to their conventionally grown counterparts. It reveals how both chefs’ (otherwise well intentioned) interventions in the complex and highly contested space of ‘free range’ labelling and certification often occurs without sufficient sensitivity to the specificities of the particular labelling and certification systems they are promoting. Instead, ‘free range’ is typically presented as a single, idealised and uncontested standard. This exposes Oliver and Fearnley-Whittingstall to a range of contradictions resulting from the need to present complex information on healthy, animal friendly and sustainably produced food in simple, unambiguous and entertaining messages, and highlights the limits of consumption politics as means to effect widespread change within our food systems. This research emerges from the Sustainable Food Systems Flagship research project run though the Institute for the Study of Social Change.
Michelle Phillipov is an ARC DECRA Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Media and Communications. Her DECRA research explores the current ‘mainstreaming’ of food politics that has occurred in television cooking shows, cookbooks, advertising, news and online media, and examines the relationships between the media and food industries that have resulted from this intensified media focus on food.
When Tuesday 30 August 2016, 5.30pm to 6.30pm
Where Harvard Lecture Theatre 1, Centenary Building, Sandy Bay Campus
This is a free lecture and open to all members of the public as well as University staff and students – we look forward to seeing you!
Email Louise.Grimmer@utas.edu.au if you require further information or directions to the venue.