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How milk does the world good: vernacular sustainability and alternative food systems in post-socialist Europe

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Abstract

Scholarly debates on sustainable consumption have generally overlooked alternative agro-food networks in the economies outside of Western Europe and North America. Building on practice-based theories, this article focuses on informal raw milk markets in post-socialist Lithuania to examine how such alternative systems emerge and operate in the changing political, social, and economic contexts. It makes two contributions to the scholarship on sustainable consumption. In considering semi-subsistence practices and poverty-driven consumption, this article argues for a richer, more critical, and inclusive theory of sustainability that takes into consideration vernacular forms of exchange and approaches poor consumers as subjects of global history. Second, it revisits practice theories and infrastructures of consumption approaches to consider ruptures, discontinuities, and historical change in infrastructures as a way to account for inequalities and experiences of marginalization.

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Notes

  1. This form of milk distribution has been noted as fast disappearing in the early 1970s due to the low price and easy access to industrialized milk (Shmelev 1971; Wadekin 1973).

  2. In 2005, milk collection prices were about $0.29/l.

  3. Names and any other identifying information about informants quoted or described in this paper have been changed.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Zsuzsa Gille, Heather Paxson, Peter Asaro, Neringa Klumbyte, Maurie Cohen, Petr Jehlička, and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments on earlier drafts of this project. I am also grateful to all the participants in my study for sharing their time, knowledge, and experiences with me. Funding for this research has been provided by the Research Travel and Dissertation Writing Grants at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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  1. Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, New York University, 285 Mercer Street, 7th Floor, New York, NY, 10003, USA

    Diana Mincyte

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Correspondence to Diana Mincyte.

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Mincyte, D. How milk does the world good: vernacular sustainability and alternative food systems in post-socialist Europe. Agric Hum Values 29, 41–52 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-011-9328-8

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