Kitchens and Pantries—Helping or Hindering? The Perspectives of Emergency Food Users in Victoria, Australia (original) (raw)
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International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
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Charitable Food Systems' Capacity to Address Food Insecurity: An Australian Capital City Audit
International journal of environmental research and public health, 2018
Australian efforts to address food insecurity are delivered by a charitable food system (CFS) which fails to meet demand. The scope and nature of the CFS is unknown. This study audits the organisational capacity of the CFS within the 10.9 square kilometres of inner-city Perth, Western Australia. A desktop analysis of services and 12 face-to-face interviews with representatives from CFS organisations was conducted. All CFS organisations were not-for⁻profit and guided by humanitarian or faith-based values. The CFS comprised three indirect services (IS) sourcing, banking and/or distributing food to 15 direct services (DS) providing food to recipients. DS offered 30 different food services at 34 locations feeding over 5670 people/week via 16 models including mobile and seated meals, food parcels, supermarket vouchers, and food pantries. Volunteer to paid staff ratios were 33:1 (DS) and 19:1 (IS). System-wide, food was mainly donated and most funding was philanthropic. Only three organis...
Charitable food distribution as symbolic gesture: An ethnographic study of food bank work in Ontario
Community-based charitable food assistance programs have recently been established in several affluent nations to distribute public and corporate food donations to 'the needy'. In Canada, food banks comprise the primary response to hunger and food insecurity, but problems of unmet food need persist. We conducted an ethnographic study of food bank work in southern Ontario to examine the functioning of these extra-governmental, charitable food assistance programs in relation to problems of unmet need. Our results suggest that the limited, variable and largely uncontrollable supply of food donations shaped the ways in which food assistance was defined and the practices that governed its distribution. Workers framed the food assistance as a supplement or form of acute hunger relief, but generally acknowledged that the food given was insufficient to fully meet the needs of those who sought assistance. In response to supply limitations, workers restricted both the frequency with which individual clients could receive assistance and the amount and selection of food that they received on any one occasion. Food giving was essentially a symbolic gesture, with the distribution of food assistance dissociated from clients' needs and unmet needs rendered invisible. We conclude that, structurally, food banks lack the capacity to respond to the food needs of those who seek assistance. Moreover, the invisibility of unmet need in food banks provides little impetus for either community groups or government to seek solutions to this problem. r
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Although it is often assumed that food pantries are managed by middle-class directors whose social background differs significantly from that of their target populations, no systematic empirical evidence concerning this issue exists to date. Moreover, scholarship has yet to explore the extent to which the presumably distinctive social positions of pantry directors and clients might result in the stigmatization of poverty, social welfare programs, and the poor by agency directors. Drawing on insights from attribution theory, this study seeks to shed light on demographic and attitudinal differences between pantry directors and food-needy persons. The study begins by comparing the demographic characteristics of food pantry directors in a two-state region of the South (Alabama-Mississippi) with those of the food-needy population in the region. It then moves on to contrast attitudinal disparities between these directors and food-needy persons related to such issues as the causes of poverty, the effects of social welfare programs, and the character of those who utilize food assistance programs. Noteworthy differences in race, education, and religiosity emerge when comparing directors with the populations they serve; however, directors did not differ markedly from their potential clients in key social attitudes. When asked specifically about food pantry clients, directors responded with a mix of sympathy and suspicion. While a substantial portion of directors attribute poverty to structural causes, a significant number also characterize clients seeking food assistance as possibly having unsavory motivations for doing so. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings.
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Abstract Anti-hunger advocates and food geographers have often overlooked the role of emergency food assistance in struggles for food justice, dismissing food assistance as addressing symptoms rather than root causes of food insecurity. Yet, the vast network of food pantries and other free food programs are more than a stop-gap measure for millions of Americans — and thus warrant a closer look at how their practices, policies and spaces feel in practice and with what implications towards food justice goals. In this paper, we argue that barriers to emotionally-accessible food, in the form of neoliberal stigma around “free” food, play a prominent role in shaping peoples’ experiences with food assistance. Based on participatory research with a food redistribution non-profit in Boulder, Colorado, we discuss how the emotional burdens of food insecurity manifest in individual experiences with emergency food assistance programs and staff, leading to isolation and disconnection which actively inhibit more inclusive food systems. This research responds to scholarship in geographies of food and emotion, contributing analysis into how discomforts of (lacking/receiving) food are experienced viscerally. Furthermore, we discuss implications of the emotional (dis)comforts of food assistance when examining the role of emergency food assistance in broader struggles for food justice. To this end, we point to alternative practices in food assistance programs which might actively counteract narratives of neoliberal subjectivities, while simultaneously broadening the food justice community in terms of who feels comfortable participating in, and shaping, more equitable food systems.
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