Capacity building for food justice in England: the contribution of charity-led community food initiatives

Abstract

This document is the author's post-print version, incorporating any revisions agreed during the peer-review process. Some differences between the published version and this version may remain and you are advised to consult the published version if you wish to cite from it.

Implementing Holiday Provision Programmes: A Qualitative Investigation of the Experiences of Senior Stakeholders

“…financial hardship and risk of families experiencing food insecurity are not generated at a local level and therefore, solutions are required for these structural problems by changes to welfare policy. Nevertheless a lot can be done to support low-income families at the local level through holiday provision by developing the capacity of organizations and making disadvantaged communities more supportive environments for families (Kneafsey et al, 2017).…”

Introduction to the symposium on critical adult education in food movements: learning for transformation in and beyond food movements—the why, where, how and the what next?

“…We also found ourselves asking how critical education helps enable and politicize a process of broader awakening and organising for social transformation? For example, the concept of "quiet sustainability" or "quiet food sovereignty" has been used to express a politics of sustainability that is performed through the enactment of sustainable lifestyles by actors that are not intentionally nor overtly politicized (Visser et al 2015;Kneafsey et al 2017). While these practices may enact sustainable behaviors and practices, they do nothing to reveal and address the underlying systems of oppression that are left intact and unquestioned.…”

Food justice for all?: searching for the ‘justice multiple’ in UK food movements

“…While the concept of food justice is increasingly drawn upon by a range of actors to connect food to crucial matters of injustice (such as poverty), there is a lack of clarity in terms of what exactly food justice is, and what it should look like, in the UK context (Kneafsey et al 2017). Our research demonstrates that food movement practitioners predominately understand 'food justice' in terms of the universal, abstract and anthropocentric right to food, in which all human beings should have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food regardless of spatial location.…”

“…However, despite this recent intensification of the politicisation of food-related inequities, we argue that 'justice'as a contested idea and practice-in food justice deserves far greater critical scholarly and activist attention by those involved with heterogenous UK food movements. 1 Indeed, the ways in which food justice is deployed in the UK have evaded critical scrutiny (however, see Tornaghi 2016;Kneafsey et al 2017;Herman and Goodman 2018;Mama D and Anderson 2018), particularly the complex translation politics of drawing upon a concept that has deep situated roots in environmental and social justice movements of the United States (US). This raises the potential issue of mislabelling food-related activities that neglect addressing class and racial injustice (Slocum 2018) or stretching the concept to empty signifier status when applied to different contexts (Heynen et al 2012), which can ultimately depoliticise activism and stymie marginalised voices.…”

“…While actually existing food movements are multifaceted, fluid and fragmented with diverse and frequently contrasting priorities, contemporary UK food-related issues have been approached through two broad avenues. First, those engaging with food politics have gravitated towards the (re)connections between food production and consumption through various food 'qualities' (such as local, slow and organic) often related predominately to health and environmental sustainability objectives (Kneafsey et al 2017). Consequently, mainstream environmentallyorientated food activism in the UK has tended to be dominated by white, middle-class consumers concentrating on the development of local food systems and individualised consumptive logics of social change that reinforce social privilege and fail to address the underlying structural causes of food injustice (Paddock 2016).…”