The Process of Ethnocentralizing the Concept of Ecological Agroalimentary Products for the Romanian Urban Consumer

Abstract

In the case of the Romanian urban consumer, ecological agroalimentary products do not merely operate on the discursive line mapped by the rules of certification. The ecology of the agroalimentary products is reinterpreted and, thus, an interesting phenomenon occurs. The products perceived as natural, local, or peasant are seen as ecological enough to influence the purchase decision. Hence, according to the Romanian urban consumer, the ecological product stands for a symbolic projection provided by their own experience and trust level as a consumer. In the present paper, we aimed to go beyond the theory claiming that such behavior is determined by confusion in the social action of purchase and, following this line of interpretation, we also intended to identify the symbolic systems and hermeneutical criteria by which the Romanian urban consumer makes a social projection of ecological agroalimentary products through certain ethnocentralizing mechanisms. Our research paper was based on a qualitative and quantitative anthropological analysis that had, as a starting point, a questionnaire applied online (with a total of 1792 respondents, out of which 1342 were urban respondents).