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

Abstract

In this paper, we examine diverse political philosophical conceptualisations of justice and interrogate how these contested understandings are drawn upon in the burgeoning food justice scholarship. We suggest that three interconnected dimensions of justice-plurality, the spatial-temporal and the more-than-human-deserve further analytical attention and propose the notion of the 'justice multiple' to bring together a multiplicity of framings and situated practices of (food) justice. Given the lack of critical engagement food justice has received as both a concept and social movement in the context of the United Kingdom (UK), we draw upon empirical research with practitioners and activists involved with heterogenous food movements working at the local, regional and national level and apply the justice multiple concept to the interview data. We highlight the diverse ways that justice is discussed in terms of access, fairness, empowerment, rights and dignity that reflect established organisational discursive framings and the fragmented nature of food system advocacy and activism. Based on this insight, we argue that a plurivocal, relational conceptualisation of socioecological justice can help enhance the multiple politics of food justice, pluralise UK food movement praxis and nurture avenues for broader coalition-building across the food system.

Eating Insects: A Christian Ethic of Farmed Insect Life

“…Thinking in terms of justice provides greater insight into the complex ways in which humans and nonhumans intersect in and through the food production system and provides greater analytical clarity in addressing the linked exploitation of both animals and particular groups of people. 43 Such an approach reveals that slaughterhouses can have multiple deleterious effects on the workers they employ and the communities they are situated in, including elevated incidence of disease, crime, workplace injury and psychological distress. 44 As the food justice perspective makes clear, these negative consequences of contemporary forms of animal slaughter are bound up with wider social and economic conditions.…”

Justice in transitions: Widening considerations of justice in dietary transition

“…Bringing just transition studies into conversation with critical animal studies can provide one terrain to unpack more-thanhuman forms of injustices embedded in the "animal-industrial complex" (Twine, 2012). Coulson and Milbourne (2021) also argue, in line with ecological justice literature, that taking the agency or vitality of nonhumans seriously is crucial in fostering more just and sustainable socio-ecological relations in food system activities. For just transition, this means paying attention to the broader ecological integrity, such as biodiversity, soil health and water use, when planning the climate mitigation measures (Vermunt et al, 2020).…”

“…These interlinked dimensions foster an understanding of justice that does not rely upon some abstract ideal of justice, but rather allows developing a lens of justice that is attuned and refined to unpack and address the multiple forms of inequality as they are or become manifested in the attempts to make diets more sustainable. Such an understanding stresses the remedial injustices that we see as important in finding pragmatic solutions to the ongoing efforts in building more sustainable food systems, and societies (see also Coulson and Milbourne, 2021;DuPuis et al, 2011;Sen 2009).…”

“…On the other hand, some decarbonisation pathways may also be unjust by normalising non-inclusive conceptions of justice or sustainability. For example, approaches that frame transition as a matter of responsible consumerism may reproduce elitist value patterns by dismissing the fact that, in many societies, the responsible food basket is the privilege of the well-off (Hirvonen et al, 2020;Coulson and Milbourne, 2021) and downplaying the economic power of food industries and retail in shaping the demand (Mason and Lang, 2017). Hence, recognitive justice in dietary transition raises new questions such as: How do the dominant narratives produce or normalise unsustainable diets and ways of eating and, consequently, identify the benefits and costs of dietary transition?…”

Social justice-oriented narratives in European urban food strategies: Bringing forward redistribution, recognition and representation

“…Given the exploratory and European focus of our study, we did not feel comfortable unreflexively adopting either food justice, -sovereignty, -democracy or -security for our analysis, as these concepts are contested and have deep and situated roots in agreements, movements and struggles outside of Europe or that transcend the city level. Instead, we decided to embrace a pluralised and multidimensional notion of justice, similar to Moragues-Faus (2017), Tornaghi (2017) and Coulson and Milbourne (2020), and to focus on the questions, principles, processes and interventions underlying social justice, inspired by Allen (2008), Horst (2017) and Maughan et al (2020). We argue that Nancy Fraser's three-dimensional theory of justice forms a valuable point of departure for such an analytical framework.…”