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Boutique food producers at the Detroit Eastern Market: the complex identities of authentic food

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“The more you come here the more you realize that this place is less and less about food and more about the people and the stories intertwined with that food." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W88WX6tOHXg accessed February 2017). (Dan Carmody, EMC).

Abstract

Eastern Market in Detroit is one of the oldest, continuously working public markets in the United States. Starting in 2006, the management changed and the market underwent a round of renovations. Since then, the Eastern Market Corporation (EMC) has worked to increase the number of stands selling value-added food at the market. Following the EMC’s lead, the new vendors sell their fare in boutique style, putting specific care in the setup of the stands and in the visual and oral narratives they use. Their presentation of food quality emphasizes craftsmanship and cultural values more than affordability or provenance. The interplay between these vendors and the EMC management point to two worlds identified by convention theory: domestic and market. The work of boutique food producers at Eastern Market manifests a composite arrangement between the domestic and market worlds where the authenticity of the products and regard for the customers are composite principles that solidify the compromise.

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Notes

  1. Farmers have always been allowed to sell value-added products from their farms, and butchers also sold cured meats.

  2. Thanks to Brian J. Bowe for suggesting the term.

  3. Pictures and videos are one of the main tools Paco Underhill’s Envirosales uses to evaluate the effectiveness of marketing practices.

  4. Kirwan suggests the idea of a “convention of regard” that borrows from the market and the domestic convention. Since Boltanski and Thévenot provided the concept of compromise to describe constructive interactions among conventions I do not follow Kirwan’s suggestion in this paper.

  5. See, for example, the Royal Oak farmers market, located just ten miles north in the adjoining suburbs. https://www.romi.gov/DocumentCenter/Home/View/17375.

  6. The phrase “boutique producers” was originally used mostly in the New Zealand literature, mostly referring to the wine industry. It also appears, albeit without definitions, in the food tourism literature, and it is generally used to identify niche production across several food and drink sectors. Blay-Palmer and Donald (2006), in their discussion of the urban creative food economy, don’t use the term but describe this same kind of food producers.

  7. I talked with one African American farmer in 2012. That stand was not there anymore in the summer of 2014.

  8. Mass media narratives about the current resurgence of Detroit highlight the role of small, alternative, self-sufficient entrepreneurs and urban farmers, presenting them as the new face of the city. There is an intense debate among activists and long-time residents about how these narratives might marginalize the continued efforts of long term residents and historical neighborhood organizations.

  9. See Sugrue for the contentious relationship between Detroit and its suburbs, and Giorda and Lowe 2015 on the drawbacks of the revival of Midtown.

  10. The EMC hires its own security, and the Detroit Police Department provides two mounted officers to patrol the Saturday markets and several patrol cars to roam the area.

Abbreviations

EMC:

Eastern market corporation

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Acknowledgements

Special thanks go to Craig K. Harris and Larry Busch for their ongoing support and the many meaningful critiques and conversation that helped me while researching and writing this paper. The article also benefited a great deal from the insights of two anonymous reviewers, to whom I’m thankful. Special thanks to the vendors at Eastern Market and to the EMC managements for their time.

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    Erica Giorda

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  1. Erica Giorda
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Correspondence to Erica Giorda.

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Giorda, E. Boutique food producers at the Detroit Eastern Market: the complex identities of authentic food. Agric Hum Values 35, 747–760 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-018-9869-1

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