Clare Perkins (University of Wales Lampeter, UK)

Migrants from Ceredigion, a rural region of mid-Wales, who now live in the city of Cardiff, still, via frequent deliveries of an 85-mile journey, eat, by request, everyday vegetables from Ceredigion fields. Exploring what is embodied within these vegetables and the benefits of their consumption, this paper seeks to explore the determined motivations behind permeating, and thereby strengthening, the boundary between city and rural, domestic and wild.

On the ridge of this boundary exists the ‘alternative’ ‘city-rural’ or ‘domestic-wild’; a notion that I have found to be embedded within a Farmers’ Market in Cardiff city. Looking at the constant negotiation of this ‘alternative’ status by, in particular Ceredigion, farmers through their stalls at the market, this paper is concerned with the interplay between ‘alternative’ and ‘dominant’. Recognising the ‘dominant’ to be ‘British (food) culture’, it aims to explore the reasoning behind the call of the wild that has led to the creation of an embodied, liminal arena. Existing not in a position of opposition, but dependency, this arena is uneasy yet exciting, anxious yet innovative. Although conceptualised through food choice, this embodied arena is a nexus; and this paper is keen to assert the rich potential of its recognition in the understanding of social and cultural relationships at present, in the future and from the past.