1597: Shopping im Bioladen! Produkt oder Lebensgefühl? [Shopping in the bio-store! Product or life sentiment?]

Helmle, Simone (2003) Shopping im Bioladen! Produkt oder Lebensgefühl? [Shopping in the bio-store! Product or life sentiment?]. Paper presented at 7. Wissenschaftstagung zum Ökologischen Landbau, Ökologischer Landbau der Zukunft, Wien, 24.-26. Februar 2003, page pp. 337-340. Universität für Bodenkultur Wien, Institut für Ökologischen Landbau.

Summary

Der Einkauf im Bioladen ist für die Konsumenten mit der Suche nach Lebensorientierung und Wohlbefinden verbunden. Die ausgewählten Fallbeispiele stehen für Normalisierungs-, Selbstverwirklichungs- und Lerngeschichten von Menschen, bei denen der Einkauf im Bioladen ein konstituierendes Element der gegenwärtigen Lebensgestaltung ist. Die alltagsorganisatorische Notwendigkeit Lebensmittel einzukaufen, ist für die Erzählenden nur ein peripheres Thema. Der Bioladen symbolisiert Erlebtes und aktuell Lebenswertes. Dies setzt jedoch voraus, dass in der Lebenswelt der Konsumenten entsprechende Anknüpfungspunkte vorhanden sind. Paradoxerweise führt damit eine Konsumform, deren Basis unter anderem das solidarische Wirtschaften ist, zu ungleicher sozialer Teilhabe. Der Einkaufsort führt zu einer sozialräumlichen Segregation. Gelingt es den Betreibern von Bioläden nicht sich über diese enge Kopplung von Ideen hinwegzusetzen, werden die Einkäufer im Bioladen auch künftig unter sich bleiben.

Additional Summary

Ecologically produced food because of its mode of production, processing, and marketing is a symbol of an alternative order of society. Over and above health and environmental protection imaginations of "peasantness", simplicity, naturalness, originality, autonomy, and stability are projected onto such products. Buying bio-products, thus, becomes a symbolized act going far beyond just satisfying physical demand.
These assumptions are based on contrasting case analyses of autobiographic reports. Story-tellers are customers of a producer-consumer-association in Upper Bavaria selected by chance. Out of their reports strategies of coping with every day life are reconstructed. Interpretation of the reports was done by the method of grounded theory meanwhile well known in social science.
For the customers, apart from the products, a search for orientation in life and well-being is of significance. Purchasing becomes "bio-shopping". Motives behind searching this way are based on personal value patterns of which as a rule consumers are not conscious. Customers verbalize their connection with the bio-shop and its products via sentiments. They then talk about belonging to a social group, about memories of pleasant smells and good taste of products. Bad feeling occurs if ideas mediated by the shopping places and personal imaginations about the world diverge. Thus, agrarian romanticism memorized from childhood may lead searching for a type of "peasantness" which nowadays hardly can be found. This image of "pesantness" does not comprise neither experimenting dynamic farmers commanding diversified and easy to comprehend farm structures nor specialized large enterprises. Harmonious memories are shattered while being confronted with everyday life reality. In the end consumers are left with their search for "peasantness", i.e. their memories, they are however, unable to end their search by buying bio-food because of heterogeneous and conflict bearing experiences (food scares, information campaigns, farm visits). Shopping in bio-stores is, thus, part of a process in which appear harmonious and conflicting experiences of present day life styles.

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