“Taking Care of Yourself at Home”: Use of E-Commerce About Food and Care During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the City of Buenos Aires
Aldana Boragnio (National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), Argentina & CIES, Argentina) and Constanza Faracce Macia (Center for Research on Consumption, Sensibilities, and Creativity (CICSEC), University of Palermo, Argentina)
Copyright: © 2021
|Pages: 27
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-7287-0.ch003
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Abstract
This chapter presents some reflections on the changes regarding the use of electronic commerce and digital platforms during the period of preventive and mandatory social isolation decreed in the country during the COVID-19 pandemic, based on the new services food services, food delivery service, and new practices around “home care.” To this end, a survey was conducted on eating practices during the first part of the isolation period in April-May 2020, and a digital ethnography was performed on new services around food and “home care” during the subsequent period. The expository strategy is as follows: 1) the theoretical approach on the sociology of bodies/emotions and its relationship with consumption and enjoyment is described, 2) virtual ethnography is defined based on its advantages as a methodology of social inquiry, 3) research results focused on the acceleration of electronic commerce and consumption “at home” are presented during the ASPO, and 4) some final reflections are made.
TopConsumption From Sociology Of Bodies/Emotions Approach
From the lens of the sociology of bodies/emotions, emotions are not just another sociological object, but rather they become a lens from which to interpret social reality. Emotions are understood in their social character, that is, as incorporated and constructed from the interaction of subjects with the social world and with others, a process that they necessarily carry out through their bodies. In this way, the opposition between bodies and emotions loses meaning (Scribano, 2012).
The bodies/emotions of social agents are understood as products (and reproducers) of the politics of sensibilities. By the latter it is understood:
“1. A set of cognitive-affective social practices. 2.Aimed at the production, management and reproduction of horizons of action, disposition and cognition. 3.These horizons refer: (a) to the organization of daily life (day-to-day, wakefulness/sleep, food/withdrawal, etc.); (b) to the information used to order preferences and values (adequate/inappropriate; acceptable/unacceptable; bearable/unbearable) and (c) to the parameters for time/space management” (De Sena and Scribano, 2020: 45).
Thus, the politics of the sensibilities contextually organize the ways of feeling and, therefore, guide the actions of the agents, configuring sociabilities, experiences and sensibilities that contribute to the production and reproduction of societies. Currently, we are urged to think about the connections between emotions, sensibilities and the reproduction of societies while, from this conceptual scheme, inhabiting normalized societies for immediate enjoyment through consumption is thrown as a diagnosis (Scribano, 2015, 2017).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Isolation: The condition of being separated from other people, towns, countries, etc.
Consumption: Practices of use, acquisition of goods, services, subjects and experiences that, within the framework of a particular accumulation regime, implies ways of experiencing, being in the world and with the others.
Immediate Enjoyment: An act with pretensions of totality that suspends the flux of everyday life. It refers to a form of “intense” and “superficial” appropriation, restorative of objects for anxiety decrease through salvation technologies.
Digital Ethnography: A qualitative method based on ethnography that is carried out through a massive communication platform such as the Internet.
Eating Practices: Are the result of multiple social relationships and cultural guidelines that constitute foodstuffs and organize them into dishes, meanings, and diners, becoming a space of class bodies with the main consequence of shaping those bodies.