Bart Gremmen

Quitting is not an option: An analysis of online diet talk between celiac disease patients

This is an empirical study of the way in which celiac disease patients manage the risk of gluten intake in their everyday life.The article examines naturally occurring conversational data in order to study how patients cope interactionally with constantly being at risk in their day-to-day living. They reject quitting the diet as a valid option, and instead construct a ‘diet world’ in which dietary transgression is presented as an integrated part of everyday life. In this way, patients can manage occasional diet lapses without putting the validity of the diet itself at stake. By examining how the gluten-free diet is treated in interaction, we find out more about the pre-existing everyday strategies that have to be taken into account when new therapies are being introduced.

Emergent technologies against the background of everyday life: Discursive psychology as a technology assessment tool

To understand prospective users’ reactions to emergent technologies, it is crucial to examine the interactional contexts within which these reactions take place as people’s reactions are shaped by issues that are not necessarily related to science or technology. These issues are often overshadowed or remain blind spots when descriptions or scenarios of proposed technologies are thematized as being the core objects of reference. We therefore recommend also studying prospective users’ everyday-life practices in their own right, and in naturalistic settings. Insight into the social actions people accomplish in their everyday talk, such as establishing a particular identity, can help innovators translate prospective users’ concerns into relevant technology characteristics. We propose discursive psychology as an analytic tool to do this and show its merit with a few illustrative examples.

If you can't eat what you like, like what you can: how children with coeliac disease and their families construct dietary restrictions as a matter of choice

Although it is recognised that a gluten-free diet has many social implications for coeliac disease patients, not much is known about how such patients actually manage these implications in their everyday interactions. This article examines how dietary restrictions are treated by patients and their families. Data from recorded mealtime conversations of seven Dutch families with children suffering from coeliac disease were analysed using discursive psychology. We found two main discursive strategies by which patients and their families manage the diet during mealtime interactions. A reference to pleasure is used to manage the tension between the childs agency and parental responsibility in the face of health requirements and, by softening the denial of food, the diet is normalised and treated as a shared family practice. The analysis shows that the gluten-free diet is demedicalised and treated as a matter of choice rather than prescription. We conclude with the practical implications of these findings.

Consumers’ images regarding genomics as a tomato breeding technology: “maybe it can provide a more tasty tomato”

Methods of production are becoming more important to consumers in their decisions about whether or not to buy or consume a certain product. This decision making process is influenced, among other things, by the images consumers have with regard to the product and its method of production. In this research, consumer images regarding plant breeding technologies were ascertained by means of focus group discussions. Thirty-five respondents, divided into four homogenous groups, were given descriptions of three plant breeding techniques and challenged to provide and discuss their images of these technologies. The discussions resulted in images about genetic modification, genomics, and conventional breeding. It was interesting to see that elaboration of the descriptions changed the consumers’ images, especially regarding the positioning of genomics in relation to the other two technologies. Whereas initially consumers’ images placed genomics close to genetic modification, further discussion and clarification resulted in a re-positioning of genomics closer to conventional breeding.

Competing Agendas in Upstream Engagement Meetings Between Celiac Disease Experts and Patients

This article examines discussions between innovators and patient users about emergent medical technologies in the field of celiac disease. Using discursive psychology and conversation analysis, the authors analyze participants’ talk with regard to the social activities performed. They find that the topical agenda, preference structure, and presuppositions incorporated in the innovators’ questions restrict patients’ scope for saying things in and on their own terms. Not participants’ intentions per se but what the questions indirectly communicate profoundly shapes the agenda of these meetings. This may explain why some of the difficulties of innovator-user interaction are persistent and hard to pinpoint.

Why preferences change: Beliefs become more salient through provided (genomics) information

Information regarding the method of production of food products influences the decision-making process of consumers. The aim of this study is investigate to what extent information about genomics biases consumer decision making. We investigate the exact source of the biasing nature by separating the effect on consumer beliefs and the salience of those beliefs. The effect of information is tested through an information condition concerning two breeding methods, namely classical breeding and breeding enabled by genomics. The results show that consumer preferences are influenced by the information on production technology. More specifically, the consumer preferences change because consumers alter the salience of their beliefs towards the product.

“Everyone may think whatever they like, but scientists...”: Or how and to what end plant scientists manage the science-society relationship

In this study, the authors examine the performative functions of scientists’ discursive constructions of the science-society relationship. They use discursive psychology to analyze interviews with Dutch plant scientists and show that interviewees contrast the freedom of people in the private sphere with scientists’ responsibilities in the professional sphere to regulate “lay” access to science. To accomplish this, interviewees make claims about the scientific value of lay views only after they have displayed their tolerance of these views. Additionally, many interviewees refer to their own lay status in everyday life. Finally, the relationship between findings and recent science communication approaches is discussed.

Towards a philosophy of energy

Transition to a sustainable energy regime is one of the key global societal challenges for the coming decades. Many technological innovations are in the pipeline, but an uncritical appraisal of anything and everything called green innovation lacks methods for testing both the necessity and the sufficiency of these developments. We propose to develop a philosophy of energy to fill this lacuna. Its task is to explore and clarify the space in which the so-called energy transition is taking place. This article sketches the fundaments of such a philosophy and suggests how it might be built upon the work of twentieth century critics of the functioning of energy in society, including Mumford, Bataille, and Heidegger; but not without empirical analysis of contemporary energy systems. Via the example of flux and potentiality - two apparently opposing conceptions of energy - we propose that a philosophy of energy allows for a broader perspective on specific problems in energy transition, and illuminates implicit and problematic assumptions behind these problems.

Bringing the voice of consumers into plant breeding with Bayesian modelling

Improving flavour quality traits in fruit breeding calls for innovative consumer-oriented product development. This paper explores the potential of marker-assisted breeding from genomics and consumer-based quality-improvement models from marketing, and exploits the progresses at both sides as technology push and market pull. An integrative and cross-disciplinary quality-improvement model is proposed based on Bayesian modelling. This Bayesian modelling allows for the integration of elicited knowledge of breeders and flavour researchers concerning the degree of causal associations of metabolites and flavour quality traits of fruits in the model. We also present the flavour quality improvement challenge as a multi-criteria optimization process and show the potential and current limitations of the proposed model. Insights gained from the model would help flavour researchers determine the optimum concentration of flavour-affecting metabolites which could be used for further DNA marker development. These ideas and concepts will help translate consumer-desired product features into genomic information, ultimately resulting in successful new cultivars.

Consumer interests in food processing waste management and co-product recovery

Publisher Summary In the past, most of the waste of the food processing industry has been used as landfill or has been fed to farm animals. Recent changes in the legislative framework, which have been enacted as a response to various food safety incidences such as the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) crisis, have forced the food industry to reconsider recycling practices. However, at the present time, increasing attention is being paid to the concept of sustainability. As a consequence, this issue is becoming increasingly important to the food industry and other food producers. This chapter discusses some of the consumer issues relevant to sustainable production and recycling food waste into the food chain. It takes into account the factors driving consumer attitudes toward novel food products. The consumers are not just interested in sustainability but also in food safety, food quality, and a number of other issues, for example, emotional responses to novel foods, which may arise as a consequence of food reprocessing. In this way, consumer attitudes toward reprocessed food products have become a key driver to improve waste management in food processing. In considering the issue of food-waste recycling as an integral part of the food chain, some key questions regarding consumer attitudes to resultant novel products need to be asked. These include questions about the understanding of how the public conceptualizes sustainability and whether that differs from expert views regarding sustainable food production practices. It is also important to understand how the beliefs and attitudes relate to the consumption of specific foods and food products.