Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK 350 Main Street, Malden, MA02148, USA Sociologia Ruralis, Vol 42, Number 4, October 2002 ©European Society for Rural Sociology ISSN 0038−0199 ‘The Invisible Mouth’: Mobilizing ‘the Consumer’ in Food Production- Consumption Networks Stewart Lockie A n explosion in consumer demand is widely held to be responsible for recent growth rates in the organic 1 food sector of 20 to 50 percent per annum (Acres July 2000, p. 1), straining the ability of producers, retailers and so on to meet demand and creating an attractive environment for the entry of new participants (Coombes and Campbell 1998; Lyons 1999, 2001; Burch et al. 2001). But who are the apparently sovereign ‘consumers’ responsible for this growth and how do they place ‘demands’? Is the ‘invisible mouth’ of ‘the consumer’ to replace Adam Smith’s mysterious ‘invisible hand’ in the maximization of utility and the allocation of agri- food resources to their most economically eficient use? Alternatively, do discourses of ‘consumer demand’ merely obfuscate the manipulation of consumers by producers, retailers and others in the pursuit of accumulation? This paper continues a project that attempts to problematize the ways in which the concepts of production and consumption are brought together within agri- food studies and subjected to empirical scrutiny (see also Lawrence et al. 1999; Lockie and Collie 1999; Lockie et al. 2000; Lockie and Kitto 2000). Lockie and Kitto (2000), in particular, set out a theoretical and methodological approach that advocates the use of actor-network theory to focus increased attention on the symbolic economy of food; the complex and relational nature of power as it is extended through production-consumption networks to effect ‘action at a distance’; and the centrality of nature and technology to those networks. In practice, however, we have found that in following the methodological approach advocated in Lockie and Kitto (2000), it remains dificult to tackle the ield of consumption adequately. This problem is not unique to our approach. Friedland (2001) argues that the complexity of social relations involved in bringing food to the table has mitigated against holistic analyses of ‘commodity systems’ in favor of particular aspects of commodities; acknowledging criticism that consumption, as one of those potential aspects, has been relatively ignored in Commodity Systems Analysis. Similarly, Fine (1995; Fine and Leopold 1993; Fine et al. 1996) argues that we need to deal with the full material culture and consumption of foods but retreats empirically to a productivist and deterministic stance as these prove too complex to deal with within the Systems of Provision approach that he develops (Lockie and Kitto 2000). This paper elaborates on the actor-network theory-inspired approach to production-