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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Alexandra Hughes
This is the authors' accepted manuscript of a book chapter that has been published in its final definitive form by Springer, 2021.
For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
This chapter explores challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic to retail landscapes and to the cultural practices of everyday life in which consumption is embedded. Using the case of food as an emblematic commodity, the chapter accounts for the extensive impact of the crisis on the retail sector, which is moving consumption increasingly online and contracting and reconfiguring markets. It also acknowledges the fragility of the just-in-time supply chain model, with implications for food security. Together with restrictions on people’s mobility and face-to-face encounters, these shifts are profoundly affecting everyday practices of consumption. Examples of changes include an increase in home cooking, greater frugality, and more shared meals within households. Attention is paid also to increasing inequalities in access to food shaped by health considerations and by the effects of the global economic downturn caused by the pandemic. Finally, the chapter suggests some ways in which the impacts of the pandemic might shift the trajectory of a key dimension of consumer spaces – sustainability.
Author(s): Hughes A
Editor(s): Andrews G; Crooks V; Pearce J; Messina J
Publication type: Book Chapter
Publication status: Published
Book Title: COVID-19 and Similar Futures: Geographical Perspectives, Issues and Agendas
Year: 2021
Pages: 247-252
Print publication date: 20/06/2021
Acceptance date: 17/09/2020
Series Title: Global Perspectives on Health Geography
Publisher: Springer
Place Published: Berlin
Notes: Chapter 32.
Library holdings: Search Newcastle University Library for this item
ISBN: 9783030701789
