Where the wild things are: examining the reflexive affectivity of wilderness on product marketing within industrialised systems

ABSTRACT While our relationships with eating and drinking are thought to have undergone a period of disenchantment during industrialisation, some sociologists suggest a re-enchantment is taking hold. This paper explores the reflexive affectivity of wilderness on food and beverage marketing in consideration of persistent cultural tensions such as planetary decline, risk, freedom, and time pressures. Using social practice theories and semiotics, we examined significations of wilderness within a combined dataset of children’s snack and alcohol product labels (n = 78). We describe icons and symbols used to portray wilderness, then apply sociological theories to explore the affective commodities these ‘wild things’ might enable. We suggest wilderness can open reflexive navigation of three affective tensions: (1) domesticated/untamed; (2) romantic/colonial; and (3) nostalgic/convenient. Empirically applying semiotics supported explorations of shared meanings within practices involving eating and drinking. Findings show how reflexive negotiation of affective tensions is shaped by commercial power and sociopolitical conditions within social practices. We suggest meanings of wilderness might sustain specific affects within various social practices, particularly those that balance cultural constructions of responsibility and freedom with the vexed nature of affective resistance to industrial food systems while still being inside them.