Negotiating dignity and social justice in community food access spaces
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore how key stakeholders and recipients of local food access programs operate strategically to meet individual and community food needs, enhance experiences of dignity and promote social justice. The study of a fragmented community food system highlights the connections between micro and meso dimensions of food access, illustrating how people work around food system limitations to access food.
Design/methodology/approach
Using qualitative in-depth interviews with food assistance managers, workers, volunteers and recipients, this study examines the period before the implementation of a centralized community-based food access initiative in a mid-sized, rural Oklahoma college town with a high rate of food insecurity. This study asks: What are community members’ experiences in a fragmented food assistance system? In what ways do individuals use everyday resistance and workarounds to actively promote experiences of dignity and social justice in food access spaces?
Findings
Those involved in sites of community food access build important networks to share information and engage in negotiation and trade to gain access to useful food resources. As forms of everyday resistance, such practices encourage co-construction of dignity and social justice in stigmatized spaces.
Originality/value
This research contributes to literature examining micro- and meso-level community dynamics that inform agency, dignity and social justice in community food access approaches.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to project participants for sharing their stories and Amy Herrington for her invaluable research skills and assistance.
Funding: Partial funding for this project was provided by the Oklahoma State University College of Arts and Sciences Community Engagement Grant Program and the Laurence L. and Georgia Ina Dresser Professorship in Rural Sociology.
Institutional review board statement: The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Institutional Review Board of Oklahoma State University (protocol code AS1655, 27 May 2016).
Citation
Schweitzer, J., Mix, T.L. and Esquibel, J.J. (2024), "Negotiating dignity and social justice in community food access spaces", Safer Communities, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/SC-08-2023-0036
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited