No. 2 (2024)
Dossier - Quality Food: The Challenges of Law

Between social stratification and racialization: the political use of “perfect” food

pdf (Italiano)
Monica Raiteri
Law Department, Section of Legal, Economic and Social Sciences, University of Macerata
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54103/1972-5760/27870

Published 2025-01-20

Keywords

  • Food safety,
  • Regulation,
  • Social mobility,
  • Imperialism,
  • Victorian Age

How to Cite

Raiteri, M. (2025). Between social stratification and racialization: the political use of “perfect” food. Sociologia Del Diritto, 51(2). https://doi.org/10.54103/1972-5760/27870

Copyright (c) 2024 Monica Raiteri

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Nowadays the quality of food is considered a regulatory tool operating as a particular concept of safety, the food safety. Law uses patterns as the typical tools of regulatory systems that match the “quality” with production or territorial originstandards, even if these ones are the outcomes of the functioning of power and lobbying dynamics, typically operating inside the European institutions, as evidenced by the decision-making relating to the recognition of some certifications (PDO, PGI, ecc.). The origin of the outline of “perfect” food, that is a standard which can act to include social classes, as it shows for example the relevance of nutrition in educational processes, or, vice versa, to exclude someone, due to the price dynamics, dates back to Victorian England, when the regulatory framework of food quality and safety, identified as suitable for resolving many issues related to food insecurity and the need to protect consumers, were mostly inherited from the previous century, is placed against the background of important socio-political issues. Starting from the vagueness of the relationship between administrative sanctions and private control apparatus into the regulative contemporary framework, and assuming this background, the essay aims to investigate the “political” use of food as a normative system which, however, calls into question both the social stratification system, typical of Victorian society, as shown by the case of the Nowadays the quality of food is considered a regulatory tool operating as a particular concept of safety, i.e. food safety. The law uses patterns as typical tools of regulatory systems that link “quality” to standards of production or territorial origin, even if these are the outcomes of the functioning of power and lobbying dynamics that typically operates within the European institutions, as demonstrated by the decision-making with regard to the recognition of certain types of certification (PDO, PGI, etc.).

The origin of the concept of “perfect” food, i.e. a standard that can act to include or exclude social classes, for example by showing the relevance of nutrition in educational processes, or, vice versa, to exclude someone, dates back to Victorian England. At that time, the regulatory framework of food quality and safety, which was seen as suitable for solving many issues related to food insecurity and the need to protect consumers, was mostly inherited from the previous century, against the background of important socio-political issues.

Starting from the ambiguity of the relationship between administrative sanctions and private control apparatuses in the contemporary regulative framework, the essay aims to investigate the “political” use of food as a normative system, which, however, calls into question both the social stratification system typical of Victorian society – as shown by the case of the spread of exotic foods in the English diet –, and the mainstream theme of the relationships between poverty and poor food quality, as shown by the debate on food adulteration.

spread of exotic foods in the English diet, and the mainstream theme of the relationships between poverty and poor food quality, as the debate on food adulteration has been showing.

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