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Competition, adaptation and mutation: Fresh market and supermarket conventions in Thailand Bronwyn Isaacs, Jane Dixon, Cathy Banwell, Sam-ang Seubsman, Matthew Kelly and Suttinan Pangsap Journal of Sociology 2010 46: 413 DOI: 10.1177/1440783310384454 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jos.sagepub.com/content/46/4/413

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Competition, adaptation and mutation Fresh market and supermarket conventions in Thailand Bronwyn Isaacs

Department of Geography, University of Sydney

Jane Dixon

National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Australian National University

Cathy Banwell


Sam-ang Seubsman

Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, Bangkok, Thailand

Matthew Kelly


Suttinan Pangsap

Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University, Bangkok, Thailand

Abstract The speed at which international supermarkets chains have integrated themselves into Thai diets and food practices is without prior historical precedent. This article uses ethnographic data from Chiang Mai, Thailand, to examine how values surrounding food and food cultures are being sustained, are adapting and are being transformed. It examines both supermarkets and fresh markets as places where the values unfold in different ways. In discussing the sometimes competing, intermingling and mutating values, a Conventions Theory approach is adopted. The theory facilitates a discussion of the monetary, social and cultural evaluations of Chiang Mai’s food markets. In doing so it is argued that the conventions theoretical approach could usefully be extended from western settings to take account of non-western development trajectories and culture-economy interdependencies. Keywords: consumers, conventions theory, development, fresh markets, supermarkets, Thailand

Journal of Sociology © 2010 The Australian Sociological Association, Volume 46(4): 413–436 DOI:10.1177/1440783310384454 www.sagepublications.com

414 Journal of Sociology 46(4)

In Thailand, a rapid and arguably amicable collision of two social institutions is underway between the home-grown ancient fresh-food market and the imported hyper-modern supermarket corporation. Thailand is internationally renowned for its national cuisine; yet for an increasing number of Thais the most interesting, exciting and most inherently ‘Thai’ food spaces are giant Tesco, Carrefour, Makro or Big C supermarket stores. This collision might be constructed as a competition between eastern and western modernity, the former represented by the communal observance of spiritual practice and the latter signified by the pursuit of individualism through consumerism; or, as a collision between Buddhist appreciations and the imperatives of the secular market. Our interest lies not in identifying the singularities of the fresh market and the supermarket, but in the search for value interactions and the mutually constitutive processes shaping the trajectories of the two institutions. Value interactions, we suggest, might influence Thailand’s development more broadly. To achieve our aim, we adopt a Conventions Theory approach. As an analytical tool, Conventions Theory fosters discussion of how different socially-constructed values play out across different spaces. The spaces in this instance are supermarket and fresh market locations in Chiang Mai, investigated as part of two independent ethnographic investigations of changing food values in Thailand. In recent scholarship, especially within consumption literatures, Conventions Theory has been utilized as a useful complementary or alternative tool to political economic approaches (Murdoch and Miele, 2004; Kirwan, 2006). This is because it investigates ‘value’ through a range of non-monetary categories and privileges the specificity of the local (Storper, 1997; Murdoch et al., 2000). In this article we use Conventions Theory to look beyond economic framings of food markets to encompass discussions of the social, cultural and ecological values that influence diet and consumption behavior. Analysts of the ‘supermarket revolution’ have pointed to the level of foreign supermarket penetration in Thailand as noteworthy of attention. For example, Reardon and others (2007) identified that in eight months during 2002 five global food retailers invested Baht 6 Billion ($120 Million USD) into the Thai economy. Mutebi (2007) found that although the Thai government implemented policies to deter foreign ownership of Thai grocery retail, 10 transnational grocery chains were operating in Thailand by 2002; the highest number of any south-east Asian country. Thailand, like many parts of Asia, is experiencing a ‘nutrition transition’. Kosulwat (2002) implicated supermarkets as contributors to three significant trends in Thailand which contribute to dietary transformation: a lessening of food self sufficiency within households; a national transition from an agricultural to an industrially based society; and an increase in food produced for export rather than national consumption. Rising obesity in Thailand has been associated with increased consumption of processed

Isaacs et al.: Competition, adaptation and mutation 415

snacks and television advertising, to which supermarkets have been linked (Hawkes, 2006). The current lack of academic analysis or investigation into the cultural trends emerging in Thailand’s international grocery sector is part of a larger research deficit of cultural enquiry into supermarkets or fresh markets in nonwestern countries (Humphery, 2007; d’Haese et al., 2008). The few exceptions that begin to examine the social dimensions of the ‘supermarket revolution’ include: Abrahams (2006) in South Africa, Gamble (2007) in China and El-Amir and Burt (2008) in Egypt. In Thailand, despite the increasing spread and popularity of supermarkets, fresh markets continue to be the most frequented shopping location (USDA GAIN, 2004). While Yasmeen (1996, 2000) has considered the street vendor and other public eating spaces in Thai society and some attention is being given to supermarket influence over changing food practices and consumption values in Thailand, the venerated and centuries old fresh markets have been the subject of little research. We begin with a short explanation of Conventions Theory, outlining its utility for examining transitions in culture. The field setting and the modernization of Chiang Mai’s culinary culture are briefly described. We then tease out the conventions in the two ‘colliding’ food formats as provided in the narratives of participants in our respective projects. Our discussion identifies the intermingling as well as appropriation of conventions that is taking place between the fresh markets and supermarkets. We suggest that the conventions mutate once they are situated in a new context. We conclude by reflecting upon how supermarkets get ‘under the skin’ of fresh markets and hence ‘old Thailand’, and also how the sustained popularity of fresh markets compel western and Thai supermarket chains to act in ways that are culturally acceptable. We then consider the implications of the diffusion of cultural conventions across space and society for influencing the future of Thai development.

Conventions Theory For more than half a century sociologists have taken a keen interest in how modernity has advanced through the decoupling of key cultural, economic and political institutions (Polanyi, 1944; Bell, 1978; Urry, 1994) and how cultural intermediaries (Bourdieu, 1984; Zukin, 1991) and actor networks (Callon, 1999; Law, 1999) have been busily reinstating connections through constructing what are known as cultural economies (Dixon, 2002; duGay and Pryke, 2002; Amin and Thrift, 2004). One mechanism to figure prominently in the cultural economic sphere is discourse, or the symbolic encoding of language, goods and services which may take a variety of forms ranging from the ‘abstract, the expressive, affective and aesthetic’ (Allen, 2002: 40). Out of this discursive activity, ‘worlds’ or ‘orders of worth’ (Boltanski and Thevenot, 1999) are established. Orders of worth act to guide decision


making in everyday life (Boltanksi and Thevenot, 2000: 218). They entice people to reflect on their accumulation strategies in particular ways. In the tradition of Polanyi (1944), Conventions Theory searches for time and place specific ‘orders of worth’ by investigating the social, relational and unpredictable elements of economic exchange. Building on the work of Storper (1997) and the sociology of Boltanski and Thevenot (1999), attention is redirected from more prescriptive neo-classical discussions of the market as the principle form of societal organization and towards the autonomy of individual agents to negotiate social agreements. Conventions Theory does not take the object or actor as the primary item of investigation. Instead the focus of inquiry is considered to be the relational and ‘locally evolved routines or conventions that permit actors to go forward’ (Storper, 1997: 45). As such activity finds collective agreement within the context of interpersonal relationships, its perimeter is determined locally (Storper, 1997). Thus, Conventions Theory is concerned with the intermingling process by which conventions evolve, and ‘on zones where differing entities and artifacts “exchange properties”’ (Murdoch and Miele, 2004: 231). Within the agri-food field, Conventions Theory is commonly adopted to discuss fringe and emerging ‘alternative’ economies. In applying a Conventions Theory approach to study fast food and slow food culinary networks, for example, Murdoch and Miele (2004) found that: ‘Where McDonald’s “economizes”, Slow Food “culturalizes”: McDonald’s combines civic, market and industrial conventions in ways that ensure the dominance of economic criteria, while Slow Food combines civic, ecological and market conventions in ways that favour cultural and environmental criteria’ (p. 244). In their summation, there was very little intermingling of conventions between the two formats: although earlier in their article they had observed that retailer-consumer negotiations over valued qualities promote ‘mixtures of conventions’ (2004: 233). Particular attention has been paid to ‘territorial economies’ that rely on local relations, nature, and avante guard lifestyles to resist the standardized markets constructed by ever present giant corporate conglomerates. Some have highlighted how new concerns about food safety and ethics arising from the non-accountable monitoring of supermarket retailers has seen the renewed popularity of farmers markets in countries such as England, France and New Zealand (Murdoch et al., 2000; Rosin, 2008). In one application of Conventions Theory to farmers markets, the emphasis was on the bundles of values that accrete through the social interaction between producers and consumers (Kirwan, 2006). The analysis highlighted the extent to which standards and qualities ascribed to markets were in a dynamic state of negotiation. Further they were locally specific despite being within a common food retail format. Contemporary discussions of Conventions Theory often refer back to an established set of six conventions based upon western philosophy and history,


namely inspiration (aesthetics, transcendence); opinion or reputation (public image); civic (collective interest, social utility); market or merchant (exchange relationships); industrial (efficiency, measurement); and domestic (close and trustful ties) (Boltanski and Thevenot, 1999; Baird, 2008). Salais and Storper (1992) identified four producer worlds which closely align with those just listed: industrial, market, innovation and interpersonal. In Kirwan’s application of the theory, the convention of regard was identified, described as being an inevitable consequence of ‘face-to-face interaction between producers and consumers, and is an important source of mutual satisfaction’ (Kirwan, 2006: 308). Within the world of regard, commercial transactions are subordinate to, or commensurate with, social transactions and to a ‘way of life’ that is built upon social intercourse. Given the intense negotiations underway between food retailers and consumers in Thailand, we loosely structure our discussion around bundled conventions that at one point in time would have appeared discrete. Based on Storper’s work, Holt and Amilien (2007) suggest that markets and consumers inhabit ‘worlds’ or orders of worth which are playing off the conventions of ‘dedicated-specialization’ and ‘generic-standardization’. Furthermore, while these competing values are negotiated, Holt and Amilien propose that markets navigate between ‘proximate’ and ‘distant’ orders of worth and consumer activities oscillate across a spectrum that spans ‘involvement’ to ‘hyper-reality’. We understand these latter two terms to mean respectively, a direct experience conditioned by specificities such as culture, history and place. Secondly, the concept of hyper-reality we understand as associated with postmodern theory and Baudrillard in particular, as it has been applied to amusement parks and shopping malls (Baudrillard, 1994; Castello, 2006). Whereas direct experience is concerned with use and exchange value, hyper-real experience centres on what Baudrillard (1981) referred to as sign value. Our field work resonates with the bundling of discrete conventions, the displacement and metamorphous of conventions and making sense of oscillations. For example, respondent narratives touched repeatedly upon how the presence of moral and social obligations and relationships of trust were evident in both retail formats, but some reflected that they were being displaced in the hypermarket by ideas of ‘standardized perfection’, food safety and quality. In the hypermarket presenting monitored, modern ‘quality’ has become central whereas providing a sense of community remained central in the fresh market. We discuss how relationships between consumers and retailers/sellers are influenced by their respective engagements with orders of worth reflecting: involved or hyper-real conventions, proximate and distant conventions, and dedicated or generic conventions. We refer to the convention of ‘regard’ when bundling involved, proximate and involved conventions and to the convention of ‘standardized perfection’ when bundling hyper-real, distant or mediated conventions.


Introduction to the field setting In Thailand, food is a powerful national symbol. Signature dishes, flavours, and local markets are distinctive of Thai culture and ethnicity (Seubsman et al., 2009). Local cuisines evolved through innovating and imitating cooking methods and styles introduced by the Royal family as a sign of the country’s sophistication (Seubsman et al., 2009). Internationalization and western ‘modernization’ of the Thai state further contributed to changes in food and culture into the 19th and 20th centuries (Baker and Phongpaichit, 2005). During the Indo-China war, for example, American military expenditure and the presence of US troops led to the opening of niche supermarkets and introduction of new foods. In Chiang Mai the culinary American influence had lasting effects, including the popularity of the Frankfurt sausage which is a common ingredient in main meals in the city today (Grimes, 2005). Since the late 20th century, there has been exponential growth in the modernization and westernization of Thai food practices and spaces. The building of roads, railways and processing plants allowed for the mass exportation of food. Land based markets (as opposed to floating river markets), small grocery stores, and ‘convenience foods’ including pre-cut vegetables and curry pastes, increased their presence as more women entered the cash economy by starting up their own food businesses (Yasmeen, 1996; Dixon et al., 2007; Nethipo, 2008). In Chiang Mai, the 1990s heralded a distinct new consumption phase powered by investment from international grocery companies and Bangkok agricultural and retail companies including the Charoen Pokphand Group and Central Group (May, 2006). Urban space was transformed through the presence of shopping malls, national and international supermarket chains, out-of-town hypermarkets and 7-Eleven convenience stores. Following the 1997 Asian Economic Crisis, commercial control of the modern food purchasing outlets increasingly drifted off-shore. Kanchoochat (2008) describes how many foreign grocery companies bought out their weakened Thai partners, and purchased large areas of land for building further supermarket sites throughout Thailand, dramatically altering the dynamics of food retail. The rise of the supermarket represents a significant shift in Thai social, economic and culinary culture, and it is broadening the diet for some Chiang Mai shoppers while simultaneously introducing a new element of consumption-based distinction (Isaacs et al., 2010). Simultaneously, they are blurring earlier distinctions regarding the supremacy of the local or national over the international. Today, with the notable exception of 7-Eleven, Thailand’s biggest and most dispersed ‘modern’ grocery formats have significant European or UK ownership (May, 2006). The fieldwork conducted by the authors indicates that the ‘supermarket revolution’ underway in Thailand is influencing local food environments through business and symbolic pressures on traditional fresh food markets.


This pressure is generating disparate reactions: consumer support for the progressive nature of hypermarkets, community resistance to this modern incursion with clamorous support for the revitalization of fresh markets, and corporate cooption of some key features of fresh markets. While many Thais indicate their allegiance to traditional cultural and culinary values, these values are currently being held in tension with new practices, statuses and relationships created by international markets.

Sites of research Two independent teams conducted ethnographic research in Chiang Mai consumption spaces during 2008. About one third of respondents from both projects were at ease sharing supermarket and fresh market conventions and values. This is not surprising for those who shop in both retail formats: because the formats are simultaneously offering common and distinctive orders of worth. Most regular fresh market consumers claimed they shop at supermarkets at least once a month and most supermarket consumers reported visiting fresh markets every month or fortnight. A smaller, but significant proportion of respondents were equally reliant on both the supermarket and the fresh market, visiting the supermarket once a week for ‘dry’ products and the fresh market 2–5 times a week for fresh produce. Project 1

This project occurred during June and July of 2008 in south-west Chiang Mai, an area locally known as Hang Dong. The team consisted of one Australian anthropologist and a Thai interpreter. In total, 40 interviews of a mid–long range (lasting 12–90 minutes) were conducted. In addition, short interviews lasting between 2 and 12 minutes were conducted with another 70 consumers. The shorter interviews were largely used to canvas a range of opinions which emerged during longer interviews. Recruitment was not difficult, with the majority of people agreeing to be involved. The interview style was informal. While most interviews were in Thai, a small number of interviews were, at the interviewee’s request, conducted in English; in some others, the interviewee would use a mixture of Thai and English. Interviews were halted close to the end of six weeks after it was determined that few new response themes were being identified. Observational research was undertaken when visiting fresh markets and supermarkets, most frequently on afternoons, evenings and weekends. For each site information was gathered through the use of observation, photographs and by engaging in interviews with consumers who shopped in these places. Interviewees were recruited within the fresh markets, small food shops in the villages and within the supermarkets (especially within the attached food court areas). The project was closer to a traditional style


single research site rather than multi-sited ethnography (Marcus, 1995). The majority of participants interviewed lived and shopped in the study area and as a group they raised common issues such as: the newly created local Hang Dong municipal council, and the fast appearance of new hypermarkets on the Hang Dong road and important community locations such as the Hang Dong district market and the Airport Plaza Mall. Men constituted one quarter of the interviewees; who came from a variety of social and vocational backgrounds including food vendors, mechanics, farm and agricultural workers, students, retail workers and professionals in business, advertising, banking, research and education. Others were retired, did not work or did not define themselves by any occupation (such as some wealthy women who relied on their husbands for income). Project 2

In September 2008 two markets in the old city center of Chiang Mai were studied. A team consisting of two Australian and two Thai researchers, a bilingual Australian research assistant and a local academic who was fluent in the local Chiang Mai dialect visited the Tanin and Chiang Mai Gate markets. These are both busy retail fresh markets in the centre of Chiang Mai. The Chiang Mai Gate market caters somewhat more to tourists, both Thai and international, although both markets are predominately patronized by their local communities. Stall holders were approached and asked whether they were willing to participate in focus group discussions regarding the market. Almost all were willing and one focus group was held in each market. Each focus group discussion involved around 10 key informants with other market stallholders coming and going as their custom allowed. Separately customers were approached and briefly interviewed regarding their shopping behaviours and views on different retail formats. Interviews were conducted in the Thai language with some informants using the Chiang Mai dialect. Discussions were recorded using hand held recorders and later transcribed and key themes extracted. The great majority of stallholders involved in the focus groups were women and at the Tanin market were all aged between 30 and 40 while at the Chiang Mai Gate market ages ranged from 20 to 54. Information was derived from these focus groups on: products sold in the market and how this range had changed over the preceding 10 years (both in fresh produce and pre-prepared meals sold at the market); moves towards modernizing and making the markets more hygienic; opinions of the stallholders regarding local and foreign foods; and the influence of new retail formats such as supermarkets on business in the market. Fifteen shoppers were interviewed at the Tanin Market with seven men and eight women being represented. These shoppers ages ranged from 20–70 years. Shoppers were asked questions regarding their food shopping patterns, their opinions regarding different food retail formats, changes which have occurred in fresh markets


Table 1: Fieldwork sites Market

Location and details

Mae Hia Market

Hang Dong, Chiang Mai (privately owned) Hang Dong, Chiang Mai (council owned) Hang Dong, Chiang Mai (early morning market) Hang Dong, Chiang Mai, (informal, occasional market) Hang Dong, Chiang Mai (hypermarket) Hang Dong, Chiang Mai (hypermarket) Hang Dong, Chiang Mai (cash and carry store) Central Chiang Mai (all day market) Central Chiang Mai (all day market)

Hang Dong Market San Bah Sah (teak wood) Market Meeting Market Tesco Lotus Big C Makro Chiang Mai Gate Market Tanin Market

over the preceding 10 years and the influence of local culture on their consumption and shopping behaviour.

Constructing a ‘world of regard’: Fresh market and hypermarket approaches Practising regard at the fresh market

Modern Chiang Mai ‘fresh markets’ are not produce markets: producergrown and producer-made items are bought alongside vegetables purchased through middlemen and franchised food products. Yet the potency and appeal of the market is encapsulated in the phrase ‘local market’. As one interviewee said, ‘Chiang Mai is a good place, because no matter where you go there is a local market’. One 20-year-old woman who worked in a supermarket complex, when asked of her favourite place to shop said, ‘the fresh market or the small shop, I go to the small shop near my house four times a day’. Another woman who worked at a supermarket complex said, ‘If I have time I prefer to go to the fresh market because it looks local, it is cheaper and I can chat to the shop keeper’. The preference for what is geographically local was repeatedly explained in terms of immediacy or proximity. That is, respondents described how they felt involved and secure because they were enveloped by neighbourhood relationships within their ‘local’ markets and ram chan, ‘local shops’. The importance of these relational considerations in fresh market activity was succinctly summarized by one single female respondent. The respondent lived in a small one room house near Mae Hia and was a frequent consumer and admirer of hypermarkets. However


she contrasted the lack of social interaction available at supermarkets with her local market, saying: [Mae Hia] and Meeting Market are much better for talking to people. … People go to the fresh market because it is the centre of the community. You can go there to enjoy the community and to get all the news from the community.

Another woman described how she appreciated the fresh market because ‘when a customer goes to the market the seller will often talk beyond formalities and ask about the well being of their family’. A young man contrasted the difference between the markets in his suburban village and modern retail by saying, ‘at the village market it is friendly, but in the city … it is another world!’ Even those who offered criticism of fresh markets – like the regular supermarket shopper who claimed ‘I feel pity for the fresh market seller’ – expressed lingering attraction to conventions of regard which operated there. The proximate, involved and specialized conventions of fresh markets had many benefits for consumers. Respondents spoke of their preferred fresh market as a place where they had knowledge of the food sellers and could therefore trust them to provide ‘quality’ food, charge fair prices and to value their custom. The social immediacy of the fresh market was also reflected in the willingness of the sellers to act against their financial interest, by making gifts to their customers. One woman said: At the supermarket and the fresh market the quality is the same but I prefer the fresh market. I buy there everyday so they reduce the price for me and if I do not have money I can also buy on credit.

Sellers explained that they listened to consumers, to ‘discount a few baht’, ‘negotiate’, ‘explain the price’ and were ‘always willing to listen to opinion’. Some sellers constructed a veneer of keeping fixed prices while actually halving the sizes of their snacks, or reducing the amount of meat in their products. One woman explained how she could not raise her stall prices because she ‘felt sorry’ for her student shoppers due to the rising cost of living. Therefore, whilst the decisions of sellers were primarily motivated by personal desires for financial profit, fresh market monetary transactions occurred in a space where the convention of regard intervened and was obeyed. This was exemplified in the way in which one woman voiced her criticism of the Mae Hia market. Rather than speak loudly, she whispered so as not to cause offence, explaining, ‘I have to whisper because I do not like this market’. As spaces characterized by small-scale and socially proximate retail, Chiang Mai’s fresh markets hold cultural and political influence not yet rivaled by the supermarkets. Fresh markets have co-existed as sites for spiritual festivals and often include shrines for offerings and prayer. Moneyraising, festivities and prayer often go-together in religious events, making the market a locus of the community’s economic, spiritual and social life.


Companies, groups and politicians demonstrate their local concern by financially supporting market events and fundraising efforts. Practising regard at the supermarket

Chiang Mai supermarkets are attempting to establish a social, spiritual and philanthropic role, and it seems that they are borrowing heavily from fresh market conventions. In this format, the ‘gift relationship’ is experienced mainly through the promotion of loyalty cards. One of the most popular ‘gifts’ was phone credit, given to frequent consumers at Big C supermarket: a gift which not only built consumer loyalty but demonstrated supermarket support for conversational and relational activities. Other adaptations of the convention of regard included participating in local spiritual life by using flags to highlight vegetarian foods during the appropriate festivals. Festival decorations and packaged gifts for monks were sold and outside the store there were electronic versions of Buddhist shrines next to posters advertising the supermarket’s donations in Thai communities. Chiang Mai consumers are aware that supermarkets are newcomers to the practice of locally informed civic and domestic conventions. For example, one woman who criticized the supermarkets attempts at fundraising and donations said, ‘They advertise [their donations], but I don’t see anything’. Others commented that although food and gifts for monks were sold at the supermarket, the proper place to buy food for offerings was the market. The perceptions that supermarkets do not fulfil their social obligations are clearly premised on normative assumptions of how things should be; and consumers used their appreciations of fresh market conventions to judge the supermarket. Tensions were evident regarding the legitimate role of supermarkets in Thai society. When asked about the presence of foreign supermarkets in Chiang Mai, shoppers assumed that supermarkets, with their powerful social and economic presence, carried social obligations to be fair and protect the interests of weaker parties. For example, a contract labourer who was interviewed in a Tesco food court said: ‘There should be fewer supermarkets because it affects the small shop … ownership of supermarkets should be half and half with Thais, it shouldn’t be more.’ Another consumer thought ‘They should agree that some things be sold at the supermarket and others at the fresh market’. Consumers judged supermarkets by their social efficacy in fulfillment of community responsibilities. Supermarkets have responded to this expectation in some ways, such as allowing a few traders to set up small food and shop stalls in the supermarket car park. Here we see what we would call a mutant form of the world of regard encapsulating the ‘proximate, involved and specialized’ conventions expressed through acknowledgement of the local/ familiar and reciprocal/shared fortunes valued by Thai fresh market shoppers. The hypermarkets have also simulated a ‘fresh market’ feeling within their stores. Peanuts and bananas are cooked on open cooking vats and a


fresh fish stall sits amid tables piled high with fruit and vegetables. Big C signs read ‘Fresh Market’ above the fake trees and amid decorative baskets surrounding the produce. The heaped vegetables and cooking vats aims to replicate the experience of sensory stimulation and culinary education found in Chiang Mai’s fresh markets. However in the following section, we turn to how these experiences are repackaged according to new ideals of supermarket standardization and genericization.

Constructing a world of ‘standardized perfection’ through scripted product quality and service, and the ordering of space Practising ‘standardized perfection’ at the supermarket

Thai supermarkets are adopting typical supermarket strategies to consolidate their supremacy in food retailing to more middle-class consumers: product quality and assurances of food safety, multi-faceted service delivery, and a physical layout which signifies order and control. We discuss each of these strategies in turn. While some consumers illustrated their trust in relationships with local sellers and fresh markets to obtain ‘safe’ foods, supermarkets used standardized strategies to assert their own standards of reliability.1 Indeed supermarket products and vegetables are famous among the Chiang Mai participants for being ‘chosen’ and ‘best quality’. These descriptions appear to fall neatly under the standardized-generic convention bundle. Typical of supermarkets in the west, Chiang Mai supermarkets stress the monitoring of standardized food products as an indicator of quality control (Friedberg, 2007). Supermarkets in Chiang Mai present fruit and vegetables wrapped tightly or sealed in plastic and with certification stickers such as the ‘Doctor’ home brand of the supermarket. For example, ‘Doctor’ branded vegetables were labelled with a sticker that read in Thai: ‘Tested by a doctor. Hygienic vegetable. Includes some vitamins and good for health’. Through such labelling, government or public quality control is usurped by commercial quality audits, a practice which is shown to be instrumental in supermarket control of supply chains (Burch and Lawrence, 2007). Not all consumers were convinced by the supermarket’s standards and quality control, with one man describing the meat as ‘too pale and not fresh’. An elderly man who used the supermarket regularly to meet a friend and drink beer while his wife shopped for dry ‘consumer items’ commented: The vegetables here at the supermarkets may have more pesticides, because food from many farms is all packed together and you cannot be sure of the source. But when you go to the fresh market you will go to a shop where you know the seller and he will know from which farm the vegetable comes from.


However, a number of respondents thought otherwise. One woman who worked at an orphanage said: I don’t go to the fresh market; with the pesticides I am not sure if it is good for the children. At the supermarket I know the food is tested to check it is not dangerous. The food looks good; it is clean and covered with plastic.

Another respondent claimed: When I go to the supermarket I will buy some vegetable like Chinese kale or mixed mushrooms. The kale is better at the supermarkets because normally at the fresh market the kale has pesticides and tastes bitter. I trust the doctor brand at the supermarket. Supermarkets are convenient, they are on the way home and you can tell the food is better quality because they use an expiry date.

Significantly, this respondent was the same woman who said that she frequently shopped at the fresh market because it was the ‘centre of the community’. The different attachments expressed about the supermarkets and fresh markets demonstrated the ease with which consumers were open to accommodating a range of conventions. In Chiang Mai’s ‘local’ markets, values of community care and prioritizing relationships before profit are expressed outwardly and are made evident in the way activity is conducted. In hypermarkets, ‘service’, both visible and anonymous, has become a leading priority. Trained staff work behind glass in the bakeries and a host of young employees in uniform, usually women, are ready to weigh and wrap the chosen vegetables and to pack shopping bags. Staff are dedicated to fruit and fresh food arrangement, and creating beautiful displays. Supermarkets also provide dedicated ‘care’ services, like a wheelchair and shopper ‘helper’ so that the disabled need not rely upon friends and family for help. In Tesco, check out cashier’s farewell their customers with a bow and a wai raising the hands together in front of the face as a sign of deference and respect. The consumer enjoys the comfort and convenience of modern retail together with appropriated conventions of relational and dedicated attention. However, the new comfort has been taken out of the context of local relationships. Dedicated attention is performed between strangers; the practice substitutes the ‘comfort of strangers’ for the earlier ‘comfort of intimates’. Fresh market spaces are crowded and intimate: musicians sit along the narrow paths busking for money and people are everywhere: behind small stalls, sitting on the ground, and jostling for room and attention with others. Consumers participate in festivities which include games and karaoke. In contrast, supermarkets offer wide, brightly lit spaces among which consumers can push trolleys with a high degree of ease and comfort. Although performance spaces and events are included, musicians play on small stages in the food-court. Busking does not occur; and in the evenings Tesco Lotus car parks are used for store sponsored aerobics, where shoppers dressed in ‘Tesco’ t-shirts follow scripted moves of a professional instructor.


One strategy used by hypermarkets, Big C and Tesco Lotus, in building their utility as a social space was placing large ‘food court’ areas with tables and popular chain restaurants adjacent to their own stores. In these ways hypermarkets become a new location for social and economic activities in Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai respondents described hypermarket activity by referring to the area as a social space where they spent time with family. For example, one mother said: I am always here … maybe two or three times a week at Tesco, Big C more often. I live in Hang Dong area. I come with the kids, maybe I pick up the kids after school and my husband comes too … it is comfortable here. You can drink beer and sit here. You can sit here the whole day. I sit here from noon to 5pm and the kids can play.

This woman spent the bulk of her time at the hypermarket alone, as her husband lived in Bangkok and her daughter spend most of the afternoon at school. Her description of the hypermarket highlighted its potential for social engagement. Unlike the local fresh market, it is unusual for customers to meet people they know at the hypermarket or form a relationship with those who work at the cash registers. However, for this respondent, the hypermarkets were also representative of her gated community neighbourhood, saying, ‘For us there is no other place to go’. However by symbolizing the supermarket as indicative of a certain class, this respondent used the supermarket as a space of imaginative community without actually engaging in conversation within space. Thus while the hypermarkets are places that offer a location for much social interaction, they also provide a representation or ‘hyper’ version of community. They in fact provide an order to social interaction while keeping conversational opportunities ‘distant’. Here is an instance where conventions oscillating between the proximal and involved and the distant and hyper-real. Practising ‘standardized perfection’ at the fresh market

Diffusion of conventions is two-way. Partly under the impact of losing customers to hypermarkets, some fresh markets are imitating supermarkets in relation to the western industrial convention of cleanliness and standardized order. Markets are under local regulatory pressure to up-date their spaces and stalls to reflect new ‘modern’ ideas of hygiene and convenience. Hang Dong market had recently installed a new roof, raised tables and sent some sellers on ‘field trips’ to observe modern style market practice. Many markets are installing new roofs and cement floors and tables that shield food from water, dirt and dust in deference to new ideas about what is considered acceptably ‘clean’. As well as these structural improvements, hygiene standards in fresh markets are also monitored by local officials and vendors are given instruction on cleanliness, food handling and storage. For example, at many markets such as Tanin market the public health department visited stall holders every couple of months and examined their vegetables. In


Chiang Mai’s fresh food markets, particularly Tanin market, there also many stalls advertising the organic status of their vegetables, indicating that they follow food safety standards and occasionally government food safety certification. These changes are not only being promoted by government bodies but organizations such as The Thai Fresh Market Association are assisting stall holders to compete with modern retail by supporting stall holders in preserving the markets and their associated ways of life while at the same time it works with consumers to ensure that markets meet their needs and reassures them about the quality of fresh market foods. At Mae Hia and Tanin Markets in addition to the changes mentioned above in relation to hygiene and infrastructure, supermarket style ‘onestop-modern-convenience’ was evident in the introduction of spaces clearly allocated as car-parks, the installation of ATM machines and the ongoing development of shop-houses around the market providing restaurants, cafes, bakeries, stores selling household items and renting DVDs. Outside of the covered Mae Hia market, a few traders were allowed to sell fruit on tarpaulins laid on the ground for a small fee; however inside the market there was strictly only two of any similar style stall (vegetables or bread products) allowed. Stalls were regularly inspected by the private owners. Following the opening of Tesco and Big C, the market, like the supermarkets, was open seven days a week. New ideas about what qualified as a certain standard had therefore ‘got under the skin’ of local fresh market space and practice. Not all markets had adopted the same ‘modern standards’. The Chiang Mai Gate market remained in the older, crowded, dark, wet style buildings, with stall holders maintaining that it appealed to tourists and those who deliberately sought out what was different and specialized. Markets such as the Meeting market and the Teak Wood market also remained largely unmodernized, with many products being sold from the low benches close to the ground. The Meeting market moved to different sites on different days of the week while the Teak Wood market continued with its early morning hours only. However Mae Hia – with its blend of modern and traditional format – was able to successfully cater for a middle class clientele who chose to shop at fresh markets because they delivered the convention of regard. Fresh markets are distinctive in their provision of foods with readily identifiable symbolic identity including local vegetables and Northern Thai dishes, and local sellers are ‘famous’ for their best food products. While supermarkets also sell specialized products, such as a range of popular Thai vegetables, ready-to-eat meals and foods, regular supermarket consumers suggested ‘there are some things you can only get at the fresh market’. The nominated ‘local’ or ‘cultural’ foods included popular Thai ‘fast foods’ such as omelettes with dipping sauce and Northern Thai sausage. These foods made according to local tastes and traditions catered for specialized palettes


in ways that generic supermarket foods did not. Many respondents also appealed to a sense of special or inherent value in the Phug Peun Baan (local vegetables), with which they are familiar. One woman suggested, There will always be local vegetables. That will never change and even if there were no vegetables I would plant them myself … The way of life in Thailand is to eat local food. This has been Thai culture, to eat local food, since the ancestral time. … It is very difficult for that to change.

Another respondent who agreed about the blurring between the fresh markets, local vegetable availability and being a Thai explained: I never buy vegetables from the supermarket … I prefer vegetables at the fresh market, they have no pesticides. The vegetables at the fresh market are local vegetables; they are pak dam lom rua [vegetables ‘near the garden-fence’]. They are planted near the fence and grow up near the fence.

For these women, the local and culturally inflected nature of food asserted a status of safety within intimacy. Harmony with both the surrounding environment and through time created a sense of the ‘local’ by which the purchaser renewed their sense of self identity and self worth. ‘Local’ vegetables meant safety and wellbeing with which they could nurture their family. Adhering to the social, spiritual and specialized conventions of the fresh market did not preclude consumers from also supporting the ‘civic’ or spiritual ideals and values of conventions supported by the supermarkets. Supermarkets appropriated ‘civic’ conventions, most significantly by presenting themselves as ‘Thai’ spaces. Many consumers explained that they liked the stores for their ‘Thai atmosphere’ and were unaware of foreign corporate ownership. Isaacs (2009) describes how these stores then used their Thainess to present new definitions of modern Thailand. Consumers then drew on both fresh markets and supermarkets as a cultural resource. A mother and daughter described how their house-ceremony used both fresh market and supermarket food: We bought food from Tesco, from Makro and from the market. At the ceremony we invited many of our friends and family and ate rice, sticky rice, chilli paste, clear soup, fried vegetables, fa kiaow, pumpkin, cashew nut and a chilli paste with a nutty taste.

While both supermarket and fresh market food were symbolically present at the ceremony, the presence of certain local vegetables meant that fresh markets (together with small food vendors) were an essential source for the available foods. House ceremonies provide a platform for women to recreate status in the community by demonstrating their economic and cultural capital. Therefore the inclusion of both supermarket and fresh market foods is significant. Hirai (2002) argues women in north Thailand subvert traditional house performances by employing ‘modern’ materials such as


makeup, mini skirts and karaoke. Similarly, using supermarket food in conjunction with fresh market food acts as a mechanism in which socialspiritual relationships can be mediated and performed in a cultural economy that is attempting to bridge the ancient with the latest. The symbolic influence of ‘modern’ standardization over Chiang Mai fresh markets, culture and lifestyle was commented on by respondents. One young man reflected, ‘Supermarkets make Chiang Mai modern, it is becoming modern, following Bangkok’. There were respondents who embraced this form of modernity and associated conventions. For example, one middle-aged man suggested supermarkets ‘should go everywhere in Thailand and make Thailand more developed’. However others were not so convinced by the changes; and some respondents linked supermarket entry to broad changes including the loss of specialization in cuisine and culinary knowledge. One young woman complained ‘people are not sophisticated about food now…they want something convenient. In the old days people would cook for themselves’. This broad spectrum of opinion reflects the uneven appeal of different conventions encompassing perceived quality and cleanliness, on social responsibility and social and spiritual activity.

Discussion Supermarkets have been introduced into the Thai repertoire of consumer options as locations of modern ‘standards’, ‘improved quality’ and ‘efficiency’, but do not necessarily win local preference or relevance in expected ways. Instead, the picture is a far more complex one of convention competition, appropriation and contradictory co-existence. In their quest for entrenchment, Chiang Mai supermarkets adopt both convention interminglings and adaptation and convention replacement or substitution. In particular, to win local preference, they attempt to refashion the convention of regard by simulating the dedicated nature of the service and specialized nature of products. However their strategies are held in tension with business models that favour the generic and standardized in both products and service. They not only reframe questions about food quality, safety and convenience in ways that appeal to ‘standardized perfection’, they extend this particular convention to encompass social interaction. Thus a mutant form of regard evolves, a regard characterized by impersonal but standardized interchanges with sales people, the supermarket space and opportunities to watch highly orchestrated entertainments. Chiang Mai supermarkets play with convention imitation and adaptation of fresh market spaces but they do not completely bridge the conventions gap. Clearly they do enough bridging however: for despite being aware of hypermarket attempts to imitate the fresh market, consumers willingly spend time, if not money, on admiring ideas, multiple brands and imitative practices.


Elements of festivity and celebration, the ‘social’ community space, themes of abundance, and stimulation of the senses and the spiritual, are all adopted and refashioned in the large-scale retailers. However, the ethos of monetary exchange is hard to ignore in the hypermarket, impacting to some extent on any social exchanges that take place. The possibility of such contradictory realities in supermarkets is demonstrated by Miller (1998) in his ethnography of a London supermarket. According to Miller, UK consumers practice their shopping determined by the realities of ‘best price’, while simultaneously imagining shopping according to an idealized notions of love and family. In contrast, fresh markets are renewing their local importance through a combination of convention appropriation from global supermarkets in conjunction with continuing support for local conventions that show how social, embodied ‘human-level judgements can circumvent the uniform standards associated with more mainstream exchange contexts’ (Kirwan, 2006: 311). In particular the fresh markets are attending to improving the physical layout, extending opening hours, making themselves more accessible physically through adding car parks and through displaying signs testifying to hygiene. They are not entirely successful in their adoption of the commercial conventions of standardized perfection. While they might upgrade the premises, some stall holders appear reticent to jettison a ‘way of life’ centred on privileging more messy or chaotic community relationships.

Conclusions Storper argues that when capitalistic markets are strongly entrenched, ‘markets become the principle arbiters of what is legitimate collective action’ (Storper, 1997: 48). Following the work of John Wilkinson, Kirwan (2006) has noted that Conventions Theory was developed with an eye to the capitalist wage relation and to legitimizing what was being produced within the confines of that relationship. Thus it is perhaps not surprising that Conventions Theory applications are entirely based upon following food sub-systems in western countries and the markets of advanced capitalist societies. Conventions discussions tell a nearly singular historical and thematic narrative: a move away from dominant capitalistic and distant markets towards the localized and interpersonal production of ‘alternative’ food networks. In Asia, however, fresh food markets and the conventions that surround them have not been characterized by employer–employee relationships. The exchange relationship has been dominated by the interactions between the owner-producer and consumer. Although middle-men also play a critical role in providing agricultural produce to sellers, the majority of stall holders are in the main self-employed business people. In this context one would expect to find the ‘world of regard’. The future of the interaction between


these fresh markets and modern supermarkets however has become a key point of contestation in Thai politics (Mutebi, 2007). The yardsticks of standardization, efficiency and cost are important to governments enmeshed in the global economy; and the influence of commercially valued conventions is evident in Chiang Mai as municipal markets are sold to private operators, and as old market lay-outs give way to supermarket-type order and bright appearance. One dimension hanging heavily on governments is the potential loss of thousands of livelihoods that are involved in fresh markets. Equally potent for the government is the appeal of urban living for increasing numbers of young Thais, and with this comes demand for urban consumer possibilities: including the chance to live near a supermarket. Leading analysts of the retail revolution in developing countries, Reardon and Berdegué (2006: 19), have concluded that ‘The mirror image of the spread of supermarkets is the decline of the traditional retail sector’. Our research suggests however that the spread of supermarkets has not yet resulted in fresh markets becoming irrelevant or an inferior choice in Thailand. The case-study approach employed in this article, demonstrates the usefulness of Conventions Theory in discussing the significant shifts taking place in food values, market practices and in a sense of local and national identity. Undertaking the fieldwork in a context marked by a very different cultural economy to that which first inspired the theory assists us to ‘theorize back’ on the dominant sets of conventions which have been widely accepted in the west. In particular, suggestions that fresh and farmers markets are presenting the avant guard alternatives against industrialization and commercialization of food have local and cultural limits. Non-western case studies offer a wealth of available material with which to conceive how other possible interactions between agents, nature and the global capitalistic markets might, and do, unfold. This is not to ignore the existence of a single, globalized, capitalistic market. Globally, supermarket TNCs continue to grow in size, to consolidate the market in the hands of a few, and to search for untapped and expanding markets (Planet Retail, 2009). Fresh markets in Chiang Mai have contemporary dietary, social, and spiritual significance. Yet the strength of their conventions of regard, involvement and specialization, does not mean that their future is assured. In fact in the Thai context, fresh markets and their economic relations continue to dominate food retailing. It is as yet unclear whether the cultures of consumption that are evolving in the West as a result of the rising popularity of the conventions of regard and environmentalism (Kirwan, 2006), will end up resembling Asian cultures of consumption where civic, domestic and regard conventions sustain their relevance. Equally, it is unclear whether Asian conventions surrounding fresh markets will be subsumed by the different conventions surrounding supermarkets or whether a new third hybrid model may emerge.


Despite its intellectual lineage, the Conventions Theory approach is appropriate to western and non-western settings alike because in both contexts, economic relationships are in flux and under continual renegotiation. Growing corporate dominance does not preclude the presence of powerful alternative economies (Gibson-Graham, 2006), nor does it prevent the unfolding of a 21st century capitalism in Asia according to a different historical and social narrative to that which unfolded in the west during the 20th century. Greater attention to the history and diversity of conventions in Thailand and Asia may shed more light on the future trajectory of cultures of consumption elsewhere. Critiquing the seemingly uni-linear trajectory of development, markets and money is, after all, what Conventions Theory sets out to achieve.

Acknowledgements This study was partly supported by the Thai Health-Risk Transition project with joint grants from Wellcome Trust UK (GR0587MA); and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (268055) under the International Collaborative Grants Scheme. We acknowledge the assistance of all members of the Thai Cohort Study team. We would like to thank Bongkot Theppiman for her interpretation and assistance.

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Biographical notes Bronwyn Isaacs is a researcher with a background in Anthropology and Geography. Her research focuses on rural and urban consumer cultures and food supply chains with Australia and Thailand. At the time of publication Bronwyn is researching food systems in the Sydney Basin at the National Centre of Epidemiology and Population Health, Australian National University. Jane Dixon is a food sociologist and public health social scientist. She is author of The Changing Chicken (UNSW Press 2002) and co-editor of The Seven Deadly Sins of Obesity (UNSW Press 2007). Her research focuses on healthy and sustainable food systems in Australia and Thailand. She is a senior fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Australian National University. Cathy Banwell is a fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Australian National University. She is an anthropologist with an ongoing interest in the social determinants of health, especially sociocultural components of consumption and their health risks. Dr Banwell also specializes in social contexts influencing women’s parenting practices and sexual health, including practices of parenting among illicit drug-using mothers. Sam-ang Seubsman is the head of the Thai Health-Risk Transition Project and Thai Health Promotion Office based at Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University. She has many years experience in community development, community nutrition and epidemiological research. Dr Seubsman serves on many national government and non-government health and nutrition committees. Matthew Kelly is a Research Assistant and Masters candidate working on the Thai Health-Risk Transition Project based at the Australian National University. He has completed a Bachelor of Asian Studies (Thai) at the ANU


and is currently conducting research for a Masters thesis on Food Systems and the nutrition transition in Thailand. Suttinan Pangsap is a research assistant working on the Thai Health-Risk Transition Project based at Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University. She has many years experience working on community nutrition programs including high school based education initiatives as well as conducting ethnographic field research within diverse settings in Thailand.