Episode 052: Eileen Fischer
Prof. Eileen Fischer, the eminent marketing researcher at the Schulich School of Business, talks about her research into the roles that emotional work plays in creating and sustaining alternative markets. These are those local markets that offer an alternative to mass market consumer capitalism. They bring together local producers and local consumers in an effort to build community and help save the planet. If you've ever wanted to "shop local," you'll be surprised to learn how much emotional effort it takes to keep things running.
Cameron: Anyone who's been part of a community organization of any kind, whether it's a local food bank, a kid's soccer league, or an amateur choir knows that emotions can run high. It takes a lot of work to keep everyone on the same page. People may have different reasons for being there, and they certainly will have different degrees of commitment.
Eileen Fischer, the eminent marketing researcher at the Schulich School of Business, joins us today to talk about her research into the roles that emotional work plays in creating and sustaining alternative markets. These are those local markets that offer an alternative to mass market consumer capitalism. They bring together local producers and local consumers in an effort to build community and help save the planet. If you've ever wanted to shop or sell your own goods at one of these markets, you'll be surprised to learn how much emotional effort it takes to keep things running.
It makes you wonder just how much emotional work is buried in the regular mass market transactions that make up most of the economy. Eileen Fischer has a lot to say about all of this. My conversation with her is coming right up.
Eileen, welcome to the podcast.
Eileen: Thank you very much, Cameron.
Cameron: Can you tell me about the work that you do and who you are?
Eileen: Sure. Well, let me start with who I am. I'm the Max and Ann Tannenbaum Chair of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise. A big mouthful. I'm also a professor of marketing and just for added fun and frolic, I'm the Associate Dean Research at Schulich.
Cameron: I want to talk to you about that part on another day. That's a huge part of your role at Schulich, but today we're going to talk about your research. So what's your general research area?
Eileen: I have kind of two fields that inform my research. One is entrepreneurship and the other one is consumer behavior. It's an unusual combination, but what makes it make sense for me is that I'm really interested, and always have been, in how entrepreneurs and consumers influence markets. So how does somebody starting up a business, not just make money for them, but change the field in which they operate?
And similarly, how do people going about their lives as consumers, or in this case volunteers, how do they change the very markets that they themselves are participating in? So in a nutshell, that's my interest.
Cameron: Hmm. Um, one of the things about our kind of standard version of economic theory is that it's all just transactions. It's all just about utility maximization or profit maximization. And you're talking in this paper that we're going to be digging into about a more meaningful way of participating in economic activities.
Let me give you the read out the title of the paper: "It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it: Committed consumers voluntary emotion work in alternative market systems." Now that's a mouthful. Let's break down the title. Tell me about emotion work. What is this about?
Eileen: Well, emotion work is something that people do to make things happen. One of the ways that emotion work occurs is in actual commercial markets where someone like a sales clerk greets you with a smile, grins at you through the course of the interaction, warmly smiles as you walk away. That's one well-documented form of emotion work. But there are other forms of emotion work as well, and we talk about some of them in the paper, but that gives you just a little flavor for what emotion work is. It can mean working on your own emotions. It can be working on the emotions of others, but it's quite purposive, often, to make a transaction or just a market system work.
Cameron: This phrase alternative market systems comes up in the title of your paper, and it's like throughout the paper. You give a couple of examples in the intro, um, community supported agriculture, eco-villages, nonprofit fitness programs, food waste recovery initiatives. What is distinctive about those things that you're trying to get at?
Eileen: What makes an alternative market system alternative is that it has more than one purpose. So in any of the examples you gave and in others that we might come up with, there can be a profit motive for someone in the system. But in all cases of alternative market systems, there's something more. It might be promoting sustainability. It might be promoting social justice. It might be promoting the wellbeing of a marginalized group. It might be promoting cultural things like singing. So community choirs can be thought of as alternative markets. But to come back to your question, what makes an alternative market alternative is that it's not just about making money, although it may be about that.
Cameron: So there's going to be some sort of a shared purpose behind it. Is it, is it important that everybody share the same purpose
Eileen: Oh, that's a great question. The short answer is no, because it's unlikely that in many of these alternative markets, everybody's on the same page. And part of what we find in the paper is that it's the work of those we've called committed consumers to try and get everybody back on the same page when they wander away. Because if they don't, bad things happen.
Cameron: Right, so you can have someone who's there because they're really into sustainability. Other people might be there because they're really trying to build community, and you can get a bit of a mismatch between those things?
Eileen: Or worse, you can get somebody who's coming to, let's say this alternative food market, just because they want a pleasant morning experience and they're immune to the fact that they're going to pay more for the food they're buying because it's organically produced, locally sourced, supporting small farmers. There's a mismatch there, and somebody's got to reconcile that, or the whole thing can fall apart.
Cameron: Hmm. So that reconciliation is going to happen in all those sort of micro interactions with people, right?
Eileen: Indeed, and that comes back to another part of the title, which is the emotion work that people are engaging in.
Cameron: Okay. So everybody involved to some degree has to be pulling things towards some sort of common shared purpose or it starts to pull apart. Is that the basic idea?
Eileen: The initial part of the title is, "It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it." The work falls disproportionately on certain people in these alternative market systems, and it's those that we focus on in the paper.
Cameron: Okay. Well let's get into the actual research that you did. Tell me how you went about conducting the research. What were your research methods, for instance, to use an academic phrase?
Eileen: Yes, so it's really important to point out that I'm not the first author in this paper. The first author on this paper, Kristen is was a doctoral student at a university in Norway when I first met her. I was teaching a qualitative methods course and she was a student in the course, and she described her research to me and we got talking.
That was back in 2019, and all these years later, I worked with her to help her analyze her data, which she collected in the following ways. First of all, she volunteered in this alternative food market that we talk about in the paper for the better part of three years, every week. She volunteered as an administrator and that's who we study in the paper is volunteers like her. She also did interviews with other people who were participating in the market other consumer volunteers, but also people who were producers selling their goods in the market, and all the people who were just there buying food in the market who played no volunteer role. And she did a lot of research, you know, on the history of this particular movement and things like that.
So there was, if you will, archival data involved, interview data and observational data, and with that combination of data, we did a qualitative analysis to come up with the insights that we offer in the paper.
Cameron: I want to ask you about the analysis, but I'm interested in this word ethnographic, because as a researcher myself, I sometimes struggle about the boundaries of these definitions. Do you think that this research was ethnographic and why?
Eileen: Yes, it was definitely ethnographic. She went to the sites where consumers picked up their foods from producers. She interacted with people who were doing these exchanges. She participated in the discussion forums that happened online as well as the in-person conversations face-to-face. She was really grounded in that community. She is herself Norwegian.
She participated in four different physical field sites and the field notes that she took, watching interactions between other people were really critical to us understanding what was going on in the markets. In fact, um, one of the first things she told me about, which piqued my interest and made me want to get involved as a co-supervisor and ultimately a co-author on this paper, was her talking about volunteers, completely unpaid people, tiny little women, standing up to very angry producers who were being told by these volunteers that they couldn't sell their stuff in the market anymore because they were breaking the rules. It was a powerful, emotional moment that you could never find if you didn't show up. So yes, a real ethnographic study.
Cameron: Right. So the ethnographic part is about being there on site for those impromptu moments as opposed to scheduling interviews?
Eileen: Exactly. I mean, because a lot of the interactions between people also take place online in this particular market, she could also witness a lot of actions going on online, textual actions going on between people conversing online.
Cameron: You've commented on the, the way that this market is arranged, this is, um, it's what's called a REKO market, REKO. Can you describe the market? Because it's not like, like when I think of an alternative market, I think like a farmer's market where I go and the produce is all laid out and it's a local producer and I exchange cash for the groceries and the transaction takes place right there.
I think this market that you're investigating in this research is a little bit different. Can you describe it?
Sign saying “Thank you for shopping local.” (Credit: Tim Mossholder, Unsplash)
Eileen: Very much so. So REKO means real, um, or fair, or just. So this is a real fair just market. If we translate into English. These markets were founded more than a decade ago, around 2013, 2012, by a man named Thomas Snellman, and they've grown throughout Scandinavia. They've spread as far afield as Australia and Canada, and the way they're organized is based on one main principle, and that main principle is no middlemen. So, Thomas Snellman's idea was that you could get a better, fairer, more just exchange if producers were making transactions with, directly with, consumers and there wasn't a store or some intermediary interacting in between. Underlying this idea was that these exchanges would be local. So instead of goods being produced at a far, far distance from where the consumer got them, it would have to be local if there was no middlemen. People weren't going to be trucking their stuff across the planet. They also had, a principle of no exchanges taking place on site. Why was that? Because they didn't want any extra food being trucked to a place and maybe discarded or disposed of. So in this market, all transactions take place on a Facebook platform actually, prior to their being picked up at a destination point and a point in time. So technically in these markets, no money changes hands at the site where the stuff is picked up. It all is done electronically in advance.
Cameron: I'm familiar with Facebook Marketplace, which is a product that Facebook produces, a service that is bringing together individuals who are maybe seeking a used bike with someone who's got a used bike and they use Facebook Marketplace to organize the thing. And then you go and you pick it up and you pay for it, face to face. Now you're saying this is different than that. What's unique about it?
Eileen: Well, the difference is partially in the principle of what can be sold. There's a restriction in terms of local produce. So somebody participating in the Canadian version of this market cannot sell bananas from Ecuador or, um, potatoes from the US. They've got to be selling stuff that they themselves produced. So that's point one. Point two is that Facebook organizes the transactions that take place on Facebook Marketplace. They're the intermediary there, and they make money off it. Unlike in this case, Facebook is a platform, but nobody takes any money except the producer for this. And, there's a whole lot of volunteers involved in making sure that these markets take place as they're meant to take place and monitoring them. And those volunteers are the people we focus on in the paper.
Cameron: All right. So there's a real, there's a whole collection of volunteers who are creating this event to bring people together with the produce and the consumers. So it's much less one-to-one, it's more of an organization and it, that organization is defined around a particular purpose like sustainability or what?
Eileen: Yes, sustainability and also fair trade, small trades. So they want to support local. It's very, very much local is a value in this market.
Cameron: Mm-hmm. Can you tell me about the analysis briefly? What did you do with all of this information that Kristen gathered?
Eileen: Well, first of all, we read the interview transcripts, read her field notes, and came up with some initial puzzles or paradoxes or challenges, things that didn't make sense to us in the marketplace. And one of the things that was really puzzling to us is how people who derived no pay and had no formal authority could be putting in so much work being so heavily involved in these markets, screaming at people sometimes, getting screamed at, at other times, and still somehow things went on. We noticed several incidents of producers attempting to sell stuff that wasn't supposed to be sold through the market, or consumers encouraging producers to do that, and these fearless administrators intervening to say, "Nope, that's not consistent with the principles of this market. We will not allow transactions of that kind to happen." And so based on this puzzle, we said, well, how do these people keep these markets on track? And why do they sometimes drift away from the markets themselves?
Those were the kinds of questions we eventually focused on, and we analyzed our data iteratively to answer those questions, drawing on some concepts from academic literature, like the concept of emotion work.
Cameron: Tell me more about what you found out about the emotion work in this system.
Emotional eggs. (Credit: Олег Мороз, Unsplash)
Eileen: Sure. we found that to keep these markets humming along, to keep them alternative markets, and to make sure that transactions happened but moral principles continued to be upheld, the committed consumers, we call them, these very active volunteers, engaged in four kinds of work. The first we called assurance work, which in plain language just meant they keep the market running. They make sure that producers post their stuff in a timely manner. They make sure that, when consumers come to offer their goods to the consumer, they're there on time. If a consumer doesn't show up, that's already, that's supposed to be there, they chase them down. They do the work of just making sure that there is a, a, a, an ongoing functioning of the market, assurance work. The emotion part of that is interesting because they do a lot of it by cajoling, basically. Cajoling producers to behave well. Cajoling consumers to behave well and offering calm reassurance that despite the fact that there might be a glitch, it's all going to be fine and you're going to get whatever you paid for and you should come next, back next week, 'cause you'll get good quality produce, no matter what happened on this particularly rainy night in a parking lot, which is where the drop off and pickup of produce tends to happen.
Cameron: I'm laughing because I recognize this intensely with the large class that I'm teaching and the amount of reassurance that I have to do at the time of an exam that it's going to be okay. If you have problems, just call me over. We'll get it sorted out. If your battery dies on your computer, don't worry. We've got a spare. There's a lot of reassuring that goes on.
Eileen: Yes, and I bet you can identify with the term emotion because it's a performance that you give to make everybody think it's going to be okay. So we called it assurance work because we saw them physicallly performing reassurance to make everybody feel, yes, it's okay to be in this market. You're not frittering away your money, you are getting real goods at a, at a reasonable price.
Cameron: Mm-hmm.
Eileen: So the second kind of work they performed, a different version of emotion work, was what we called promoting principles. Or we could put it another way, it's, it's teaching work. In this, primarily they were teaching consumers and to a lesser extent, producers. The producers who got involved in the market kind of know what it's about, even if they want to cheat sometimes. But consumers wander in for all sorts of reasons, and many of them are just there because they'd like some fresh produce, thank you very much, and local sounds good. They have no idea about why they should be committed to this kind of market. They should have no idea why they shouldn't expect price competition, because that's what consumers know from going to supermarkets. So this education work is again largely directed toward the consumers by these administrators who are volunteers. And again, it's a very persuasive kind of, um, almost proselytizing work. They're preaching to the choir of why this alternative market is an alternative market, not a mainstream market, and why you should support it. So that's a second kind of work that these volunteers do on a day-to-day month to month basis.
Then there's a third kind of work, which is where we started with this project, which is the policing work, and this is mostly directed towards producers who feel that they can circumvent the values of the market.
They view it as an opportunity just to sell whatever they have to whoever will come and buy it. And the policing work involves a lot of shaming, a lot of public shaming of people who contravene the rules. Often, this does not happen in the in-person interactions in the marketplace, but rather on the platform where they call out specific producers for misbehaving and threaten to eject them from the market, which causes, as you can imagine, some pretty intense exchanges. So this policing work is another form of emotion work, relying primarily on the emotion of shame.
The last form of work that we found these volunteers to be doing is community building work. So here they are. They're trying to keep the market going just in an administrative level. Yes, you're going to get your eggs today. Then they're preaching to the consumers, then they're policing the producers at some level. They've got to make this a fun place to be. So you will see them showing up at exchange sites and putting fairy lights out and having a sing along or a speaker or something to make these transactions fun, to bind people to one another. Because again, they're so committed to this, they have to keep it going by making it not an unpleasant censorious place to be, but a warm, welcoming, communal environment. So that's the fourth type of emotion work we observe these consumers doing. And collectively we found it pretty effective for keeping the markets alive and prospering and growing. Our data collection spanned COVID, and you might have thought that these markets would take a real hit during that time when people didn't want to come face to face. But these consumer administrators, these volunteers, put so much work in to keep the thing going, that they not only survived COVID, they came off better on the other side.
Cameron: Tell me about that what seems to me evident tension between this emotional work to say, "We're having a good time here. This is great. Everybody's having fun. It's working!" and the fact that it's taking place in this life-threatening context of COVID. Do they experience a lot of tension there?
Eileen: They did. But it would be fair to say that one of the reasons many of these committed consumers are as committed as they are and put in the volunteer time they do, is that this volunteer activity, as volunteerism so often does, plays a role in their own identity and social lives. So a lot of people, both prior to COVID and during COVID, found that they drew themselves emotional support from being involved in something that was community oriented, that they felt that they could make, make it seem a little normal, keep things going, do some good in a bleak time. So they derived some emotional satisfaction from it prior to COVID, during COVID, and post COVID, from that feeling of satisfaction and having done something worthwhile.
Cameron: And feeling connected to people at a time of isolation.
Eileen: Absolutely. We saw lots of people saying that they took on these roles at a time when maybe they'd become empty nesters or they'd moved to a new community and didn't know anybody, or they were just feeling kind of bereft in their own life. So it would be, um, it would be fair to say that performing this emotional labor or this emotional work can be really good for people, but as we found, that's a mixed story too.
Cameron: Tell me about these different categories of emotions that you've got. You've got commitment-reinforcing and commitment-challenging categories.
Eileen: We found that people had one of two emotional journeys in this market, those who were volunteers and deeply involved in it. The commitment-reinforcing journey was for those who found themselves coming in because they thought it was a good thing to do and might be fun or community building or whatever. And their experiences were largely consistent with what they expected. It was emotionally rewarding, rewarding for them. And the more involved they got, the more involved they wanted to be. Then there was the opposite. Some of the most committed consumers, some of those who were, when we began the project, most deeply involved in not just their local markets, but in the nationwide forum worked to keep it operating in a national level, ultimately there's no other word for it, burned out. Their engagement, particularly in policing work where they were having to tell people that they couldn't sell their goods and were being yelled at and sworn at, and sometimes personally threatened, that unsurprisingly led to many people deciding to reduce their volunteer work or, in some cases, to completely abandon the markets altogether. And in fact, interestingly, we found that a far greater percentage of those we studied who were volunteers ended up exiting from that role and ceasing to participate in the markets altogether, than those who stayed. It proves, in fact, to be a pretty emotionally demanding thing that many people just can't sustain.
Cameron: It sounds a bit like amateur coaching or refereeing in sports, where you get a lot of satisfaction out of doing it, but there can be a lot of abuse directed your way, and sometimes people just say, "That's it. I'm out."
Eileen: Other examples would be when you're volunteering for a community choir. Anything really that involves a lot of volunteer unpaid and thankless labor, unsurprisingly can lead to emotional burnout if you're getting pushback from those who are being administered, if we want to put it that way.
Cameron: Right. So your paper tells me just how much emotion work is required for these sorts of gatherings or events or markets where it takes a lot of commitment to pull people together and get them on the same page. There's a lot, and you categorize the different kinds of work and you talk about the experiences that people have sometimes the positive reinforcement, the pride, the love of the sense of connection, sometimes the very negative sense of, you know, feeling abused and just wanting out.
So for people who are trying to get involved in these kinds of activities, what should they take away from this paper?
Eileen: I think that there's kind of two, um, groups to share the message of this paper with. One is the people themselves who are thinking of getting involved. And I guess the simplest way of saying it: go in with your eyes open. It may be rewarding. But there's going to be dark moments, and you should be prepared for that. One of the things that seemed to be comforting to those who experienced tensions but somehow got through them was just commiserating with others. Unsurprisingly a problem shared as a problem halved. I think that's the colloquial expression, and I think that's true in these kinds of contexts. At least being able to blow off steam with others who are going through it can be helpful, but at a minimum, knowing that you're going to encounter some opposition and being prepared to take the flack, is being forewarned and forearmed.
The other constituency I think that can benefit from listening to this is those who organize volunteer labor. One interesting thing I want to share with you, Cameron shortly after the paper was published, Thomas Snellman himself reached out to us. He knows Kristen Peterson, the first author of the paper, and he contacted her to say he had read the precis of the paper, that he read the paper itself, and he wanted to share it with all the REKO groups he was part of because he thought it was really important for those who are organizing them to coach people to be prepared and be aware. And I think in general, anyone who is responsible for, you know, organizing volunteers. I think this is just a conversation we can have. It will not solve the problem, but it might reduce some of the pressure that's on these people who are really filled with good intentions.
Cameron: Does it have implications for the non-alternative marketplace?
Eileen: That's an interesting question. It may do. I mean, interestingly, the original work that was done on, on emotional labor was done in pure peer settings where they were looking at, um, the, the focal case in point was airline stewards, airline people who, people who worked to serve the public in, in an airline setting. The emotional work that those people do is immense and, um, often goes unrecognized and I think outside the alternative market setting, inside the mainstream market setting, recognizing the toll that emotional labor takes, people for it sheltering them from it if you can. I think there are implications there.
Cameron: Hmm. I am wondering to what extent these alternative markets reveal to us the emotional toll of regular everyday capitalism. Right. The consumer activities that we go through, the amount of labor that we do. But also the emotional toll that comes from maybe receiving a product that isn't what you wanted and how do you fight back against the system to get your refund?
Is there some connection there? Because I'm feeling it! You know that disappointment that you get, the buyer's remorse.
Eileen: Yes.
Cameron: Remorse is an emotion.
Eileen: Not to go over contemporary with you, Cameron, but I was thinking about this this morning and about how emotions are so interwoven in markets in ways we don't think about. Like think about shopping Canadian, if you will. The work of going to the supermarket and picking up and putting down every piece of produce defined if it came from a Canadian source or at least a non-US source, is time consuming. It's also emotional work. It's work that you're undertaking because you feel whatever you're feeling in the moment, whether it's patriotism or fear or some combination of those emotions. There's emotions in the market on the consumer side. There's sure emotions in the market on the producer side. Oh my gosh. We saw it during COVID, but I think we see it today. There's, there's pride, there's fear, there's anger. The consumer isn't always right and somebody's doing the emotional work of coping with that.
Cameron: Yes. There's also grieving for the fact that things have changed and we didn't want them to change.
Eileen: Absolutely. Again, markets are laden with emotions, so however crisp and calm a transaction may seem on the surface, underneath it, there can be a lot of emotions.
Cameron: Yes. I don't know that there's an answer to this, but I wonder to what extent those emotions get dealt with by some process that helps us feel better about them, or do they just get buried in our regular commercial transactions?
Eileen: I think it's would be an overgeneralization to say it's one or the other. I think often the emotions get buried. Often, we just don't think about it. Our emotions are so implicated in our lives as producers and our lives as consumers, that I think on a day-to-day basis, we just take it for granted until some vivid event reminds us that no, we're people in marketplaces. We're not just automatons.
Cameron: It's a fascinating paper. It makes me think all kinds of things about what's going on right now. So thank you for sharing it with us. Tell me about the work that you're doing now. What's next for you after this paper?
Eileen: Well, I've got several projects on the go right now at various stages. All of them have to do with dynamics in markets. One of the papers that I'm particularly fixated on right now about why discrimination persists in some markets more than others.
So take a given group against whom there may be discrimination. Let's say the LGBTQ segment. some contexts they've got relatively equal rights. Some markets. And in others, they're still experiencing significant discrimination. So I have an ongoing project with some colleagues in the US where we're exploring that and that's keeping me up at night. I really want to know the answer to this question. I don't have it yet when I have it, Cameron, I'll share it with you.
Cameron: We'll get you back on to talk about that one. That sounds fascinating. Where can people find you if they want to reach out to you to connect and learn more about your work?
Eileen: Well, I'm on LinkedIn, and I can easily be found through the Schulich website, and I'd love to hear from people either via email or via LinkedIn. Be about this research or any of the research that I'm doing.
Cameron: Great. Have you got a book or anything that you can promote? Here's your chance.
Eileen: Can't think of a book, Cameron, sorry!
Cameron: That's fine. Andrew, Anything to add?
Producer Andrew Micak: Yes. Why don't you tell us what the academic definition of emotional labor is and why don't you tell us how it differs from how it's understood in popular culture and on the internet.
Eileen: Oh, Andrew. Wow. Um, I am going to have to look for the actual technical definition of emotion labor because I don't walk around with it in my head. I'm in the paper.... Okay, so emotion work can be one of two things. There are actually two literatures on emotion work. One is focused on individuals' efforts to manage their own emotions in order to sustain markets. The other is on, is focused on work that people do which involves using emotions to change markets. So that may mean, for example, um. emotional appeals to change people's minds about participating or not participating in a market. So those are two technical uses of the term "emotion work." Andrew, quite honestly, when you ask me what the lay definitions are, I mean, I don't know exactly how to answer that question because I don't know all the ways that people are using it as a lay term.
Andrew: Okay. That's pretty good because like I think a lot of people have a completely different sort of understanding of it now.
Eileen: Yes, I'm sure you're right.
Cameron: I wonder if there's a difference, Eileen, between the notion of emotional work and emotional experiences, because people have lots of emotional experiences of buying and selling things, right, but emotion work is something distinct.
Eileen: Andrew, that may be what you're talking about. Yes. Emotion work is purposive, whether people are consciously aware of it or not. I mean, often we inhabit roles and play those roles without consciously thinking about it. So as a professor, I'm doing emotion work all the time to keep my students' attention engaged, to be empathic towards them, to suppress whatever little micro hostilities there might be between them. That's emotion work, as opposed to just, I get up in the morning, I walk out, I hear the birds singing. I feel good. That's an emotional experience. There's no work involved.
Andrew: One thing you mentioned about the policing side, where people would do usually the callouts online. I just wanted to get a bit of clarification on this. You mentioned that in some previous experiences, people would stand up to say people trying to sell things at the market that don't belong there. Are the same people doing the callouts, the same ones who are standing up in public? Or was that not necessarily in the research purview?
Eileen: Often the very same person. So some of the most vivid informants in our samples would be very active all week long or all month long or however, whatever the interval between the actual face-to-face drop off of goods. They would be policing people who were trying to post stuff and saying, "I can't let you post that. Your eggs aren't local." Or, "I can't let you post that. Those things are made with ingredients that come from far away." What, however they interpreted the principles, they were, they were, they were policing the transactions that were allowed to take place. Then they show up on site on the day when producers are giving the goods that have been prepurchased to the consumers, and if they spot anything nasty going down, they march over and they call foul. So, it is the same person and, and their work goes on online and in person in equal measure.
Andrew: Okay, good. I'm glad to hear that actually. because there's the notion of the keyboard warrior who wouldn't dare say anything in public.
(Credit: Towfiqu barbhuiya, Unsplash)
Eileen: Well, you would not believe some of these people. I mean, we don't make gender an angle in the story, but most of the, almost all the consumer administrators are women. And I would say about 50% of the producers are men. So it's not completely male dominated on the producer side, but it's not just emotional work, it's embodied emotional work. Like they're walking up, they are physically confronting people when they see something bad happening, where bad means not consistent with the market's principles.
Andrew: About the leaders of these markets, are they a type of person who you find would be inclined to forms of activism, be it political activism, environmental activism, social activism? Or is this just as you mentioned, something that they may do out of a sense of social and community belonging?
Eileen: I think there's a real spectrum there. I mean, there are definitely people who are ideological activists who take up these markets as part of a broader set of moral commitments that they have. And then there are people who are, you know, committed, but there it's also part of their social lives and it takes the full gamut.
Andrew: Okay. Why would I create an alternative market?
Eileen: Because you believe that there is a better way of arranging the, the market so that it does less harm. So I create a food market where you can only sell and buy local things because I believe that's better for the planet. That's why I would set up an alternative market.
Andrew: And I believe that that can't be done through a traditional market.
Eileen: Correct.
Cameron: Eileen, thank you so much. It's been tremendous talking with you.
Eileen: Thank you, Cameron.
Links
LinkedIn: Eileen Fischer
Research
It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it!
Eileen’s research output on Google Scholar
Credits
Host and producer: Cameron Graham
Co-producer: Andrew Micak
Photos: York University
Music: Musicbed
Tools: Descript, Squadcast
Recorded: April 7, 2025
Location: Toronto
