Ethnography of a Local Food Pantry: A Report

Coxshall, Wendy (2024) Ethnography of a Local Food Pantry: A Report. Wendy Coxshall, Liverpool. (Unpublished)

Preview

Text An Ethnography of a Local Food Pantry_A Report by Wendy Coxshall.CC_BY.Sept 2024.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (815kB) | Preview

Abstract

Executive Summary
This research report is based on a nine-month ethnography of a local food pantry in a Gold ‘Eco Church’ in Northern England, which will be referred to as the ‘Northern Local Pantry’ (NLP) from now onwards. It presents the views and experiences of the pantry ‘members’, who set up, run, and visit the NLP. It provides a ‘thick description’ of ‘pantry life’ based on the researcher’s observations and conversations with members during the pantry’s weekly opening times, and semi-structured and open-ended interviews with individual members at an agreed public venue, outside the pantry.
The aim of this research project was to explore and analyse the role of food pantries in promoting food security and alternative, ‘sustainable’ food systems, and the responses of women and families, in particular, to increasing food insecurity in Britain in the Covid-19 ‘recovery’, ‘cost-of-living’ crisis, and accelerating climate and biodiversity catastrophe.
Drawing on Barthes’ ([1961] in Counihan and Van Esterik, 2008) theories about ‘food’ as a human communication system, the report explores the meanings implied by ‘food’ and the ways it is presented, served, and consumed in different ‘food’ spaces in the pantry. ‘Foods’, it is argued, are both ‘signs’ in a semiological system of communication, and ‘signifiers’ with implied meanings. ‘Food’ also creates specific ‘social situations’, like a ‘business lunch’ (discussed by Barthes, 1961), which imply specific sets of social and cultural practices, relations, and behaviours. Different social situations or social ‘food’ spaces exist and are created by and through the uses of ‘food’ in specific areas in the pantry such as the pantry ‘shop’ and ‘café’ area. Each of these ‘food’ spaces implies a particular set of social and cultural practices, relations and behaviours. These practices, relations and behaviours, the report shows, are also based on ideas of ‘hospitality’ and ‘service’, as well as commodity and gift exchanges, including mutual aid.
The report highlights the value of food pantries as spaces that can create ‘social situations’ through ‘food’ - and by the uses made of ‘food’ – which foster the development of mutual aid among pantry members. Mutual aid is based on core values - reciprocity, shared humanity and community-driven care – and the redistribution of resources (see Littman et al., 2022). Mutual aid relations, the report shows, emerged within and across distinct ‘social situations’ (‘food spaces’) in the pantry, especially in the ‘café’ and spilled over into community life, outside the pantry and its weekly opening hours. Mutual aid and mutuality permeated the social relations, practices, behaviours of pantry members created by ‘food’ and its uses in the pantry. Clothing (and to a lesser extent housing) also contributed to the creation of social situations/spaces in the pantry, which resonates with Barthes’ assertion that clothing and housing are cultural ‘objects’ that operate in similar ways to ‘food’ as both ‘signs’ and ‘signifiers’ with implicit meanings in semiological communication systems. The report suggests that the pantry serves as a communication exchange hub of ‘food signs’ and ‘signifiers’, and mutual aid exchanges through which community and community relations are created, strengthened, and renewed.
This report also provides an empirical example of mutual aid in the Covid-19 ‘recovery’ and emphasises the strong sense of ‘community’, belonging, and wellbeing that pantry members (volunteers and non-volunteers) widely reported and the positive effects that participating in pantry life had for alleviating feelings of loneliness, depression, anxiety, and social isolation.
The report emphasises the UK economy’s reliance the global import/export market and highlights the limitations of food pantries, which depend on ‘food surplus’ produced by the global food system, while recognising that redistribution of ‘food surplus’ in food pantries reduces ‘food waste’ and landfill, which are polluting and destroying the planet. In this sense, it also highlights the limitations as well as the capabilities of food pantries to promote ‘choice’, ‘dignity’ and ‘food security’. Months of high inflation and interest rates and steep increases in food and fuel prices are leading to food shortages in supply chains and dwindling amounts of ‘food surplus’ and food donations. This is pressuring pantries and foodbanks, alike, to ‘buy in’ food to maintain a consistent supply, availability, and access to affordable ‘good’ (nutritious and adequate) food week-on-week for local members. In this sense, the report highlights how food pantries and foodbanks are both subject to market forces, the UK economy and global food supply chains, which limit their capacity and ‘capabilities’ to promote the systemic change needed to replace the ‘unsustainable’ and polluting global food system that is destroying the planet.
Notwithstanding, the report argues that food pantries promote members’ capabilities through regular access, availability and choice of affordable ‘food’, which includes (supermarket) ‘food surplus’ and ‘good food’ (‘nutritious’, ‘adequate’) from ‘local’, ‘organic’, and ‘sustainably’ grown and produced sources. These also include mutual aid contributions of fresh local fruit and vegetables from members’ allotments, and seed sharing. Allotments, the report contends, are important for local access and control over land and its uses, including the ‘sustainable’ production, distribution, and exchange of ‘good food’ through mutual aid practices that promote food security, dignity, wellbeing, and community solidarity.

Item Type:	Other
Additional Information and Comments:	© 2024 Wendy Coxshall. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Keywords:	food insecurity, food pantries, food systems, capitalism, stories, poverty, inequalities, ethnography
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Education and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences
Depositing User:	Wendy Coxshall
Date Deposited:	06 Nov 2024 10:37
Last Modified:	06 Nov 2024 10:37
URI:	https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/4420

Actions (login required)

View Item