Lifeway alibis: The biographical bases for unruly bricolage

Abstract

The function of marketplace ideology to provide a framework that guides individuals’ conduct as consumers is well recognized, though less is known about how individuals address, resist or reconcile themselves to such ideology. Drawing upon ‘lifeway alibis’, assembled from a life course reading of de Certeauean tactics, this article deepens our understanding of how the ideology of nutritionism is renegotiated in the context of dietary health to better accommodate individuals’ life events, circumstances and timing in lives. Based on the interpretations of interview data, we argue that biographical matrices must be observed as principal facilitators for critical reflexivity beyond antagonistic and politico-collective motivations. Here, we consider critically reflexive behaviour – or unruly bricolage – to be organized around dynamic life experiences and circumstances rather than statically against marketplace ideology itself. This outlook prompts us to recognize biography as a catalyst for circumventing certain ideological mandates while the overall ideology remains perpetuated throughout circumvention.