The Incompatibility of System and Lifeworld Understandings of Food Insecurity and the Provision of Food Aid in an Englis
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ORIGINAL PAPER
The Incompatibility of System and Lifeworld Understandings of Food Insecurity and the Provision of Food Aid in an English City Madeleine Power1 • Neil Small2 • Bob Doherty3 • Kate E. Pickett1
The Author(s) 2018
Abstract We report qualitative findings from a study in a multi-ethnic, multi-faith city with high levels of deprivation. Primary research over 2 years consisted of three focus groups and 18 semi-structured interviews with food insecurity service providers followed by focus groups with 16 White British and Pakistani women in or at risk of food insecurity. We consider food insecurity using Habermas’s distinction between the system and lifeworld. We examine system definitions of the nature of need, approved food choices, the reification of selected skills associated with household management and the imposition of a construct of virtue. While lifeworld truths about food insecurity include understandings of structural causes and recognition that the potential of social solidarity to respond to them exist, they are not engaged with by the system. The gap between system rationalities and the experiential nature of lay knowledge generates individual and collective disempowerment and a corrosive sense of shame.
& Neil Small [email protected] Madeleine Power [email protected] Bob Doherty [email protected] Kate E. Pickett [email protected] 1
Department of Health Sciences, Area 2, Seebohm Rowntree Building, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, UK
2
Faculty of Health Studies, University of Bradford, Richmond Road, Bradford BD7 1DP, UK
3
The York Management School, University of York, Freboys Lane, York YO10 5GD, UK
Keywords Food aid Food banks Food insecurity Critical theory Religion
Introduction This paper considers differential perspectives on food insecurity using critical theory, specifically Habermas’s distinction between the lifeworld and the system. Within the academy, the political and ethical implications of food insecurity have been considered largely in relation to food banks and, concomitantly, have been assessed through three inter-related critical frameworks: neoliberal political economy (Poppendieck 1999; Riches 2002; Tarasuk and Eakin 2003; Power et al. 2017a); food insecurity (Dowler and O’Connor 2012; Baglioni et al. 2017) and, more recently, economies of care (Cloke et al. 2017; LambieMumford 2017). Public accounts of the relationships between food banks and service users have centred on either the authenticity of need (Wells and Caraher 2014) or the shame and stigma experienced by service users in the food bank encounter (van der Horst et al. 2014; Purdam et al. 2016; Garthwaite 2016). Academic literature on UK food aid and food insecurity is growing quickly but remains limited, largely restricted to the operational procedures, scale and lived experience of ‘clients’1 in Trussell Trust foodbanks2—Britain’s largest, 1
The term ‘clients’ is adopted by the Trussell Trust to describe the people using their service. This paper adopt
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