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ABSTRACTPolitical stakeholders play a critical role in the cultural construction of the marketplace, and consumers often look to them for guidance in framing ambiguous cultural and scientific issues. Unfortunately, however, the existing consumer culture literature usually focuses on consumers' use of ideology while neglecting stakeholders' ideological orientations. In order to address this gap, I ask two questions: First, how do stakeholders draw upon ideology in order to make sense of ambiguous goods and of the extant and potential reactions of consumers to these goods? Second, what are the potential political consequences of stakeholders' ideological commitments vis‐a‐vis supporters and outside audiences? I explore these questions by interviewing agrifood system stakeholders on the subject ofin vitromeat, a nascent technology whereby meat is produced through stem cell cultures. Although ideology serves as a useful tool with which stakeholders can navigate labyrinth‐like cultural conundrums, stakeholders' ideological positions can also result in ambiguities, ironies, and incongruities. By investigating the beginnings of a potential consumer controversy, this study illuminates how ideology operates as an epistemic resource for political claims‐makers and how stakeholders' ideological commitments can result in either rewards or repercussions from allies and consumers. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The emergence of the "4th Industrial Revolution," i.e. the convergence of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, advanced materials, and bioengineering technologies, could accelerate socioeconomic insecurities and anxieties or provide beneficial alternatives to the status quo. In the post-Covid-19 era, the entities that are best positioned to capitalize on these innovations are large firms, which use digital platforms and big data to orchestrate vast ecosystems of users and extract market share across industry sectors. Nonetheless, these technologies also have the potential to democratize ownership, broaden political-economic participation, and reduce environmental harms. We articulate the potential sociotechnical pathways in this high-stakes crossroads by analyzing cellular agriculture, an exemplary 4th Industrial Revolution technology that synergizes computer science, biopharma, tissue engineering, and food science to grow cultured meat, dairy, and egg products from cultured cells and/or genetically modified yeast. Our exploration of this space involved multi-sited ethnographic research in both (a) the cellular agriculture community and (b) alternative economic organizations devoted to open source licensing, member-owned cooperatives, social financing, and platform business models. Upon discussing how these latter approaches could potentially facilitate alternative sociotechnical pathways in cellular agriculture, we reflect upon the broader implications of this work with respect to the 4th Industrial Revolution and the enduring need for public policy reform.