| dc.description.abstract | This thesis explores the food blogosphere as a potentially transformative space in which bloggers and readers alike have the opportunity to engage in an environmentally conscientious discourse about food. Through the mixed methods of a questionnaire, structured interviews and the close reading of blogs, data was collected to illuminate the following research questions; how are themes related to environmental sustainability portrayed on food blogs? To what extent do people relate to the environment through what they eat and how is this relationship communicated in the food blogosphere? And finally, how does blogging about food empower writers and readers? The findings of this thesis suggest that individuals use food as one avenue towards The Good Life, and that the food blogosphere is space in which this is communicated. The Good Life observed in the environmentally conscientious blogs studied for this thesis reject the alienating forces of mass consumerism and the massive scale of the current food system and instead founds itself on alternative conceptions of authenticity, simplicity, nostalgia and pleasure. Narratives about food, featured on food blogs, are explored in this thesis as microcosm of a much larger debate about culture, identity and citizenship in the face of environmental crisis. The food blogosphere is one space in which strategies, ideas, and practices for a more environmentally conscientious relationship to food and eating are broadcasted, and communicated. This thesis has considered the potential of the food blogosphere as a venue for affecting real change, and has found that this potential is being realized to different extents. While ultimately, the food blogs studied in this thesis do not explicitly link humanity and habitat through food and eating, they do communicate ways to close the ever-widening gap, and to consume with greater awareness to the broader implications of food choice. | eng |