Locating Religion in the Context of Charitable Food Assistance: An Ethnographic Study of Food Banks in a Finnish City

Abstract

This article explores how, for whom, and to what extent religion is part of the reality that people enter into as they seek food assistance from a religious organization. Drawing from an ethnographic study of food assistance places in a Finnish city and applying Lefebvre’s spatial triad as a theoretical approach, the article describes the role of religion in the perceived, conceived, and lived space of charitable food provision in a secular Nordic welfare state. The findings show how the role of religion in the context of food assistance is subject to particular contexts and that this role is socially produced in the practices of the food banks, in the goals of the food providers, and in the lived experiences of the food recipients. The findings suggest that charitable food assistance is a social space where divergent readings of space as either religious or secular are potentially contested. The study provides a novel approach to understanding food assistance with its interconnections with religion and poses further questions for policy development, for religious organizations engaged in charitable food provision, and for future research.

Keywords:

• Charity
• food assistance
• religion
• social space

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).