Future Study

Because the study of this Synthetic Foods Assemblage is necessarily one sided to fit into the confines of a thesis then it is important that further studies balance this out by presenting other views within the contest and to investigate The Movement in more depth. New studies might endeavour to gather information on what is thought about the Synthetic Foods market from actors within Animal Agriculture, who are most obviously farming institutions or less obviously support services and political actors. Although engaging on the subject might be seen as legitimising the threat, attempts to academically engage the other side of the Synthetic Foods debate is needed because insights gained might help explain some differences in thought regarding how markets are assembled. Even a refusal to engage with the subject of Synthetic Foods might reveal much on how Animal

Agriculture, as a cultural artefact, thinks about potentially disruptive futures such as that offered by Synthetic Foods.

Studies like this might ignite a rethink on how the multifarious actors of Animal Agriculture can mitigate the economic and societal impacts of being culturally disassembled by a new market, fuelled by new innovations. Ethically, further studies might have to grapple with the potential

87 impacts of this ignition such as the unintentional promotion of a market that becomes self-

actualising through the very performance of studying and discussing it. Actors not immediately visible to the Animal Agriculture supply chain might also be engaged in order to reveal how a market for Synthetic Foods is being conceived. Financial institutions which hold billions of dollars in

mortgages over agricultural property are one such example of an Assemblage that is adhered to Animal Agriculture and therefore might have some interesting insights into how future risks to current markets might be assessed.

Investigation of what political actors think is advisable, seeing as they are theoretically charged with keeping nation states stable and progressive. The primacy of economic interests in neoliberal political economies, means that threats and opportunities arising from the becoming of new markets is of political importance. The workings of government can be made clearer when political actors responses are illuminated and also the investigation itself may ignite action to prepare for and mitigate potential societal change. For instance, what might a quicker than expected population flight from rural areas mean for urban support services, if farms become unproductive assets? The academic study of this market might be valuable for the sake of knowledge but in addition it could be seen as valuable if it helps societal actors pre-empt a future that could arrive, could arrive sooner than thought and could have society transforming consequences.

This thesis has re-represented the arguments from The Movement and offered an analysis of some themes, therefore a more in depth method of research focussed on The Movement could assist in understanding the creation of markets and in particular the market for Synthetic Foods. What is said and transmitted for consumption is one thing but the practices of The Movement are another. This necessitates a range of other methodological techniques such as in-depth interviews, ethnographic research and participant observation to uncover their ‘doings and well as sayings’ within The Movement (Evans, 2012, p. 43). There are multiple approaches for carrying on the work of studying the markets for Synthetic Foods including collecting thoughts from Synthetic Foods, Animal

Agriculture, Animal Agriculture’s support services and the political actors of the day, as well as an expanded analysis of The Movement to more fully appreciate the thoughts which are contained here.

6.4 Epilogue

This thesis ties production and consumption together to show how markets are being made for Synthetic Foods. The spaces of consumption and production can bring an understanding of how

88 identity is negotiated and how practices evolve. Rather than producers being capitalist machines and consumers being Baudrillian dupes, each can be seen as multifariously complex entities that operate within ethical and moral spaces. While the producers of Synthetic Foods construct arguments to give meaning to their future products, it is the consumers of this information and the potential

consumers of products which have yet to reveal in which way this market will manifest, if at all. This helps to explain how markets are made through co-constructed relational meanings in exchanges between producers and consumers that bring markets about in particular ways.

The discursive spaces of institutions like The Movement, can be considered using Foucauldian Discourses and the notion of Assemblages can be put to work in helping us to understand what is happening outside of the institutional spaces, in the relational spaces of a networked market. Rather than fear the complexity of relational spaces which continually problematises spatial ordering and therefore problematises what we know, what we thought and what we thought we knew, relational spaces such as that of an assembled market for Synthetic Foods is an exciting spatial prospect precisely because of the multiple ways in which space, time and place can be interpreted. This way of thinking about market geographies portrays a poststructural world of multiple and contingent truths which adds to the weight of geographic knowledge. What Geography is, what markets are, what Synthetic Foods are, what Animal Agriculture is, what we are and what we know are not set in stone, these are negotiable and contingent…just like me…I think. What do you think?

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