Introduction: exploring the growth of food charity across Europe

Abstract

This chapter sets out the key issues with which the book engages. It highlights the range of disparate evidence which is emerging on the rise of food charity from various academic sources across Europe. It discusses the urgent need for a comprehensive and rigorous comparative study of this phenomenon. It sets out the comparative concepts used by authors throughout the book notably food charity, food and poverty. It goes on to examine debates around social and human rights and the role of food waste in food charity, before discussing of the utility of understanding food charity as part of the ‘charity economy’. It ends with an outline of the rest of the book including the methodological approach adopted across the empirical chapters.

Food assistance in Portugal: organizational challenges in three different contexts

“…The lack of human, financial and material resources leads these initiatives to provide, in several situations, a precarious service. This calls into question the capacity of these responses to promote social justice, based on the principles of equality and human dignity (Lambie-Mumford and Silvasti, 2020).…”

“…In this regard, it is possible to identify those who interpret food assistance practices as signs of the "failure of the state" and those who consider the articulation between the FAIs and the state to be natural and positive (Hebinck et al, 2018;Schoneville, 2018). The first perspective integrates a set of different academic discussions: (i) food sovereignty, (ii) food justice (iii) right to food and (iv) food security (see Lambie-Mumford and Silvasti, 2020;Williams et al, 2016).…”

“…In fact, the neoliberal [2] wave and the ideas of private responsibility, recommodification and deregulation (Harvey, 2005) have been strongly influencing food assistance. In this context, states have been delegating responsibilities to the charitable sector (Lambie-Mumford and Silvasti, 2020). With the 2008 international economic crisis, social protection was severely restricted.…”