Three Foodbanks in a Decade of Austerity: Foodbank Affective Atmospheres

Abstract

Poverty in the UK continues to rise, making it more important than ever to understand lived experiences of poverty. This paper responds to a gap in understanding collective experiences of poverty by analysing the affective atmospheres at three foodbanks in two British cities in 2014 and 2019. Drawing on ethnographies at the three foodbanks, it approaches affective atmospheres through Spinoza and a focus on capacity: the capacity of clients to be in a situation different to that of their current experience of food poverty; and the capacity of foodbank volunteers and managers in terms of how they desired the foodbank to be run. Overall, the paper argues that affective atmospheres at the foodbanks were formed by an ever-changing relation between these capacities through the past, present, and anticipated future, and the ongoing context of austerity.

Moving from Risky to Response‐able Care

“…Consistent with trends evident in contemporary geographies of care (Power and Hall 2018), food rescue organisations fill gaps in the provision of services and fulfilment of rights generated by neoliberal policies and practices (Denning 2021;May et al 2019;Poppendieck 1999). Work on food banks points to how this depoliticises hunger and surplus food by failing to address the systemic injustices that produce these two extremes while also reproducing stigma and engendering feelings of shame for recipients (May et al 2019(May et al :1254.…”

“…Consistent with trends evident in contemporary geographies of care (Power and Hall 2018), food rescue organisations fill gaps in the provision of services and fulfilment of rights generated by neoliberal policies and practices (Denning 2021; May et al. 2019; Poppendieck 1999).…”

‘I believe in building people up’: A call for attention to asset‐based community development in geographical framings of poverty in the global North

“…Austerity has been a key frame of geographical attention to poverty over the last two decades as countries responded to the 2008 financial crash (for example, on lived experiences of austerity across Europe, see the edited collection by Hall et al, 2020). Geographers' attention includes the everyday impacts of austerity (for example, on care, support, and mobility for experiences of austerity in the UK, see Hall, 2019; and on the absence and presence of austerity in people's daily lives, see Hitchen & Raynor, 2020) and the politics of austerity (for example, on the role of austerity in the atmospheres at foodbanks, see Denning, 2021; and on austerity and the production of ignorance in society on welfare reforms, see Slater, 2012). Closely related to austerity is geographers' attention to poverty and inequality (for example, on nationwide inequality in the UK, see Dorling, 2019), including the unequal impact of austerity measures in countries across the world (for example, on health inequalities in the UK, see Garthwaite & Bambra, 2017).…”

Aged spaces in an era of austerity: Food bank use by older people

“…In the last decade, ‘the question of food banks’ (Denning, 2021, p. 1022) has attracted considerable and wide‐ranging attention, particularly within human geography, sociology and social anthropology (Caplan, 2016; Lambie‐Mumford & Green, 2017; Lambie‐Mumford & Loopstra, 2020). To date, research on older people's use of food banks has largely focused on their absence from these spaces and factors contributing towards such a trend.…”