Food Sovereignty in Everyday Life: Toward a People-centered Approach to Food Systems

Abstract

This paper proposes a theoretical approach that de-centers ‘food’ in food-related research, placing social life as the point of departure for a critical analysis of food systems and the search for alternatives. Using a relational conception of food as a nexus of multiple, intersecting social-historical processes, a ‘people-centered’ approach illuminates the social elements that can inform resonant and locally inflected strategies for food sovereignty, particularly for urban communities in the USA. Building on theoretical concepts of primitive accumulation, articulation, and everyday life, as well as empirical work with the Chicago-based Healthy Food Hub, this paper explores the relationship between everyday food practices and historical processes of proletarianization as they are produced, reproduced, and contested at multiple conjunctures. In these spaces of contestation, the capacity for diverse communities to re-articulate social relations through everyday food practices could provide a potentially powerful pathway not just to food sovereignty, but an alternative to life under capitalism.

Extracto – Este documento propone un enfoque teórico que “descentra” los alimentos en la investigación relacionada con ellos, poniendo la vida social como punto de partida para un análisis crítico de los sistemas alimentarios y de la búsqueda de alternativas. Mediante la utilización de un concepto relacional de alimentos como nexo de múltiples procesos socio-históricos entrecruzados, un enfoque “centrado en la gente” ilumina los elementos sociales que pueden informar, sonora y localmente, en materia de las también cambiantes estrategias por la soberanía alimentaria, particularmente en las comunidades urbanas de los Estados Unidos de América. Construyendo a partir de los conceptos teóricos de acumulación primitiva, articulación y la vida diaria, así como con base en el trabajo empírico de la Healthy Food Hub de Chicago, este documento explora las relaciones entre las prácticas alimenticias del día a día y los procesos históricos de la proletarización, tal y como los mismos son producidos, reproducidos y enfrentados en múltiples coyunturas. En estos espacios de enfrentamiento, la capacidad de las diversas comunidades para re-articular las relaciones sociales por medio de las prácticas alimenticias del día a día, podría proporcionar un potencialmente poderoso camino, no solamente hacia la soberanía alimentaria sino también como una alternativa de vida bajo el capitalismo.

Keywords:

• food sovereignty
• urban agriculture
• food systems
• cooperatives
• African-American communities
• Chicago

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Remarks by Fred Carter, Healthy Food Hub Sustainability Address, 5 February 2011.

2 Black Oaks Community Center Newsletter, Vol. 1, No. 1.

3 Healthy Food Hub website, http://www.healthyfoodhub.org

4 Interview with Healthy Food Hub volunteer, 26 June 2011.

5 Radio interview with Kellen Marshall, Practically Speaking Radio Episode 11: Blacks in Green, 20 May 2013.

6 Television interview with Fred Carter, PCC Network Forum, 11 April 2012.

7 Interview with Fred Carter, 16 June 2011.

8 Michael Tekhen Strode, Healthy Food Hub promotional video. Posted at http://livesharelearn.com/our-stories.

9 Radio interview with Dr Jifunza Wright, Practically Speaking Radio, 20 May 2013.

Additional information

Meleiza Figueroa is a Ph.D. candidate in Geography at University of California, Berkeley. She was formerly a radio journalist and lead researcher on the film ‘Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.’ This article is based on her Masters’ thesis work in the MAPSS program at the University of Chicago, supervised by Kathleen Morrison and Rebecca Graff.