Johannes Rudjord Volden

• Volden, Johannes (2023). Doing (food) without meat? Accomplishing substitution and qualifying substitutes in household food practices. Consumption and Society. doi: 10.1332/APSQ9102. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Excessive meat consumption is associated with environmental, ethical and public health concerns. Substituting meat with plant-based alternatives has been located as a key strategy for consumers to reduce their meat intake. While a growing body of research seeks to measure consumers’ acceptance of substitute foods, less attention has been paid to how meat substitution is organised through everyday practices. Based on 50 interviews with consumers with varying levels of meat consumption in Norway, this paper explores how substitution is accomplished in everyday life, and how substitutes are leveraged in the project of meat reduction. A theoretical framework connecting theories of social practice and food qualification allowed investigating substitution as a contextually contingent process rather than the outcome of a simple product swap. The paper finds that many participants were open to the idea of meat substitution, and meatless meals could be acceptable and often desirable. However, substitution was complicated by a prevalent scepticism towards prefabricated substitute products and lacking competence to provide home-cooked alternatives fulfilling expectations in established food practices. The paper argues that ‘qualifying’ foods as substitutes depends on a range of factors beyond the material reconstruction of meatiness present in prefabricated products, problematising the idea of substitution as a straightforward strategy for meat reduction so long as consumers are motivated and/or have access to plant-based options. Shifting consumption from meat to plant-based alternatives require fundamental changes in the organisation of food environments and eating practices beyond measures targeting consumer attitudes or increasing the availability of convenient substitute products.

• Hansen, Arve; Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn; Efstathiou, Sofia & Volden, Johannes Rudjord (2023). Towards plantification: contesting, negotiating and re-placing meaty routines. Consumption and Society. doi: 10.1332/WPKF9257.
• Greene, Mary; Ellsworth-Krebs, Katherine; Volden, Johannes Rudjord; Fox, Emmet & Anantharaman, Manisha (2022). Practic-ing culture: exploring the implications of pre-existing mobility cultures on (post-) pandemic practices in Norway, Ireland, and the United States. Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy. ISSN 1548-7733. 18(1), p. 483–499. doi: 10.1080/15487733.2022.2091328. Full text in Research Archive
• Volden, Johannes (2022). Can we (de)grow meat? Bringing alternative protein in dialogue with degrowth. Tvergastein. ISSN 1893-5605. Show summary

  Unsustainable global meat production and consumption are major obstacles for a sustainable future. Ecomodernists put their faith in the burgeoning food-tech industry to create a new market for ‘meatless’ meat. Meanwhile, skeptics of ‘green growth’ call for broad systemic and cultural changes in how we deal with food. To truly understand implications for sustainability, I argue, these new meats must be seen in context of (de)growth in production and consumption.

• Moynat, Orlane; Volden, Johannes & Sahakian, Marlyne (2022). How do COVID-19 lockdown practices relate to sustainable well-being? Lessons from Oslo and Geneva. Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy. ISSN 1548-7733. 18(1), p. 309–324. doi: 10.1080/15487733.2022.2051350. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The COVID-19 pandemic has led to changes in everyday lives through restrictions that resulted in lockdown practices in the home, whereby practices were reassessed, changed, renewed, or newly established. Based on a qualitative study of lockdown practices following the first wave of the pandemic in two European cities with high living standards, Oslo and Geneva, we studied how changes in practices led to need (non)satisfaction and (un)sustainable consumption, demonstrating the significance of social interactions in how practices were coordinated. We then highlight the practice elements that favored or impeded need satisfaction, recognizing what material arrangements, skills, and competencies were necessary. Finally, we discuss the “normative accountability” of lockdown practices in discourse, in that the mutual accountability of various practices during the lockdown revealed the need for coordination between people sharing the same space. We find that social interactions are critical toward understanding how the lockdown practices were coordinated in given space-time configurations. Need satisfaction required grappling with social differentiation, as people with strong social relations, generous indoor spaces, and access to outdoor natural environments experienced higher levels of well-being. This situation has implications for policy making in terms of how societies can be reorganized to ensure “sustainable well-being” as a normative aim.

• Volden, Johannes & Hansen, Arve (2022). Practical aeromobilities: making sense of environmentalist air-travel . Mobilities. ISSN 1745-0101. doi: 10.1080/17450101.2021.1985381. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Flying has become an increasingly contested form of consumption, but ‘green’ consumers often continue to fly. This paper provides novel insights into the stubbornness of air-travel by specifically studying the obstacles that environmentally conscious consumers face when trying to limit or eliminate aeromobility. Through in-depth interviews with Norwegian environmental organization workers – conceptualised as particularly self-reflexive when it comes to environmentally contested forms of consumption – we analyse how environmentalists negotiate one of the most environmentally destructive aspects of their consumption patterns. To explore how the social embeddedness of flying complicates the reduction of air-travel in these accounts, we draw on a combination of mobilities and social practice approaches. The participants considered flying to be problematic, but also often necessary in specific practices. Various expectations related to convenience, time, and sociality, led to a certain ‘lock-in’ of (aero)mobility. Zooming out to consider broader practice geographies, we argue that aeromobility contributes to the tempo-spatial expansion of many practices, changing their contents, meanings, and the contexts in which they unfold. To achieve sustainable mobility, we suggest that attention must be shifted from the air-travels of individual consumers to the broader practices in which aeromobility is embedded.

• Volden, Johannes & Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2021). What Happens When Cultured Meat Meets Meat Culture? (Un)Naturalness And (Un)Familiarity In The Meat Of Today And Tomorrow. In Hansen, Arve & Syse, Karen Lykke (Ed.), Changing Meat Cultures: Food Practices, Global Capitalism, and the Consumption of Animals. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISSN 978-1-5381-4265-3. p. 185–206.

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• Hansen, Arve; Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn; Efstathiou, Sophia & Volden, Johannes (2023). Transforming Society Podcast: Towards plantification by normalising less meat-intensive diets. . [Radio]. Transforming Society. Bristol University Press .
• Volden, Johannes (2023). Reconstructing meatiness: insights from ‘everyday experimentation’ with meat substitution in Norway.
• Volden, Johannes (2023). Panelist.
• Volden, Johannes (2023). Can edible insects become the new meat? Exploring consumers’ experimentation with insect foods in everyday life.
• Hansen, Arve; Sundet, Øyvind; Volden, Johannes & Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2023). Friday tacos and outdoor barbeques: Re-configuring ‘institutionalized meals’ towards meat reduction in Norway .
• Korsnes, Marius; Hansen, Arve; Sundet, Øyvind; Volden, Johannes & Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2023). The Circulation of Meat: How contemporary food practices reproduce the demand for meat in Norway.
• Volden, Johannes (2023). Probing protein futures: Everyday experimentation and edible insect consumption .
• Volden, Johannes (2023). Probing protein futures: Experimental geographies and everyday edible insect consumption .
• Hansen, Arve; Sundet, Øyvind; Volden, Johannes & Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2023). Hvorfor er det så vanskelig å spise mindre kjøtt? Forskersonen.no.
• Efstathiou, Sofia; House, Jonas & Volden, Johannes (2022). MEAT meets! Jonas House . [Internet]. YouTube. Show summary

  MEAT meets! Jonas House – Insects are not ‘the new sushi’: Theories of practice and the acceptance of novel foods November 9, 2022 Recent years have seen increased interest in ‘alternative proteins’ that provide a sustainable alternative to conventional sources of meat and milk. A prominent example is the use of insects as food. Proponents often argue that insects are ‘the new sushi’, in the sense of being a culturally unusual food in the West that can nevertheless achieve widespread popularity. This argument, I suggest, is mistaken. Based on archival research on the history of sushi in the US, and qualitative research on insect-based food consumption in the Netherlands, I explain the reasons for sushi’s success and insects’ failure in becoming popular food. This comparison, I argue, provides useful insight into why certain alternative proteins – and novel foods more broadly – may or may not become widely accepted.

• Volden, Johannes (2022). Kommentar til forelesning av Richard Wilk.
• Volden, Johannes (2022). The Emergence of Cell-Cultured Meat: A brief introduction.
• Volden, Johannes (2022). Tomorrow’s food today? Barriers and opportunities for alternative proteins in household food practices.
• Hansen, Arve; Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn; Volden, Johannes & Sundet, Øyvind (2022). Kjøttskam eller ribbeglede? Show summary

  Hvordan utvikler kjøttforbruket i verden seg? Hvilken rolle vil kjøttet ha i fremtidens matsystem? Hvorfor er det så vanskelig å spise mindre kjøtt? Kan kjøtt bli laget av planter? Vil vi spise melorm istedenfor kjøttdeig i fremtidens fredagstaco? Bli med på en samtale om kjøttproduksjon, kjøttspising, og kjøttkutt i Norge og verden Samtalen vil bli ledet av fire forskere i prosjektet Meatigation – Mitigating climate change through meat https://meatigation.no/

• Volden, Johannes (2022). Kjøttets framtid i forbruket: Muligheter og barrierer for å legge om matvaner fra konvensjonelt kjøtt til alternative proteiner og kjøttreduserende praksiser fra et forbrukerperspektiv.
• Volden, Johannes (2022). Transitioning food consumption from conventional meat and towards alternative proteins: perspectives on justice and inclusion.
• Volden, Johannes (2022). Doing (food) without meat? Accomplishing substitution and qualifying substitutes in household food practices. Show summary

  Although the market share for plant-based meat substitutes is growing, little is known about how these novel protein foods are implemented in consumption patterns. This paper explores the role of plant-based substitutes in shifting consumption away from animal protein in Norwegian consumers’ diets and food practices. Through interviews with householders in four geographical regions (N=50) and urban park grillers (N=21) in Norway, this paper investigates how substitutes are embedded in the food practices of a diverse group of consumers – from meat lovers to meat avoiders. In so doing, the paper builds on previous works theorizing how meat substitution is achieved and how novel foods become constructed as (in)edible and (un)desirable, ultimately (dis)qualifying as replacers. By framing ‘meat substitution’ as a social practice involving several elements beyond the changing materiality of foodstuffs, this paper shows how the process of shifting consumption from animal to plant-based proteins requires broad changes in habits, traditions, social relations, and geographies surrounding food and eating practices.

• Volden, Johannes (2022). Tomorrow’s food today: What can consumers’ self-experimentation with plant-based meat and edible insects tell us about the future of protein?
• Volden, Johannes (2022). Tomorrow’s foods, today’s practice? Visceral encounters with alternative proteins in everyday life. Show summary

  Alternative proteins such as plant-based meat substitutes and edible insects are often proposed as sustainable solutions to conventional meat consumption. The envisioned ‘successes’ of such novel foods is often hypothesized based on quantitative measures of consumers’ attitudes and levels of acceptance, or sensorial interventions in the controlled settings of a virtual or laboratory space. Tasting sessions can be a form of ‘visceral witnessing’ (Sexton et al. 2022) in the encounter with new foods, but they obfuscate the socio-material, cultural, and tempo-spatial contexts of consumption in the relational foodscapes of daily life. Drawing on social practice theories of eating and recent scholarship on the visceral and embodied geographies of food, this paper investigates how established food practices are disrupted, reinforced, and transformed with the emergence of alternative proteins in Norwegian consumers’ daily lives. Applying an innovative qualitative methodology structured around informants’ self-experiments with plant- and insect-based protein foods, the paper searches for the ‘quotidian stories’ (Goodman 2015) of these novel foods, attending to the embodied character of their consumption. By bringing food experimentation outside of the laboratory setting, the study illuminates how alternative proteins become constructed as in/edible in everyday discourse and practice beyond existing attitudinal accounts.

• Volden, Johannes (2022). Doing (food) without meat? The role of meat substitutes in the food practices of meat lovers, meat reducers, and meat avoiders .
• Volden, Johannes (2022). What's the future for meat?
• Volden, Johannes (2022). Unge er mest positive til kunstig kjøtt. [Newspaper]. Oslo.
• Volden, Johannes (2022). The quest for sustainable protein: Edible Insects. Matlære.
• Volden, Johannes (2021). Meating the Anthropocene: Barriers and opportunities for alternative proteins in Norway.
• Volden, Johannes (2021). The quest for sustainable protein: Meat from plants? Matlære.
• Volden, Johannes Rudjord (2021). Flying Through a Perfect Moral Storm: How do Norwegian environmentalists negotiate their aeromobility practices? Mobile Lives Forum.
• Volden, Johannes Rudjord (2021). The quest for sustainable protein: Introduction. Matlære.
• Volden, Johannes R. (2021). Mat, helse og bærekraft: Hvilken rolle spiller mat for bærekraftig utvikling? Mat og helse i skolen. ISSN 1890-3193. p. 28–34. Show summary

  Tilgjengelig online: https://www.sum.uio.no/forskning/publikasjoner/2021/mat-helse-og-barekraft.pdf

• Hansen, Arve; Korsnes, Marius; Sundet, Øyvind; Volden, Johannes R. & Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2021). Holdningsendring alene gir ikke kjøttkutt. SUM-bloggen.
• Hansen, Arve; Korsnes, Marius; Sundet, Øyvind; Volden, Johannes R. & Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn (2021). Kjøttkutt krever politisk styring! Klassekampen. ISSN 0805-3839.
• Volden, Johannes R. (2020). Klima- og miljømoralismen bommer på målet. Stavanger Aftenblad. ISSN 0804-8991.
• Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn; Hansen, Arve & Volden, Johannes R. (2020). Everyday life in a Pandemic. Endringer i sosiale praksiser: Tilpasning, eksperimentering og bærekraft.
• Volden, Johannes R.; Wethal, Ulrikke Bryn & Hansen, Arve (2020). Everyday Life in a Pandemic: Norway.
• Volden, Johannes (2019). Aktivisme på godt og vondt – kan vi lære noe av PETAs hundegrilling? Stavanger Aftenblad. ISSN 0804-8991.
• Volden, Johannes (2019). Hyklerkoret. Stavanger Aftenblad. ISSN 0804-8991.
• Volden, Johannes R. (2019). Cultured Meat Meats Meat Culture: Making the case for in-vitro meat production. Tvergastein. ISSN 1893-5605. p. 61–69.
• Volden, Johannes R. (2019). Flying Through a Perfect Moral Storm: How do Norwegian environmentalists negotiate their aeromobility practices? . Universitetet i Oslo.

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