The Importance of Feminist Thought in Alternative Food Networks

This week's post is by SWIG member Hannah Evans

As a graduate student, I am interested in the geographic dimensions of uneven access to food in marginalized communities. The presumed advances in the food system have produced a worldwide abundance of cheap, processed, and genetically modified foods. Industrialized food regimes that favor mass-production, monocultural agriculture, and mechanization threaten clean water supplies, destroy arable land, pollute airways, and consume non-renewable resources at unsustainable rates. Perhaps the most disturbing consequences of these regimes is the uneven access and distribution of healthy, natural, and organic food in marginalized communities. Lack of resources and education, combined with an abundance of fast, commercialized food options, leave certain individuals and communities at once threatened by and dependent on industrialized agriculture.

Much in the way of resistance to such regimes has materialized recently in the United States through Alternative Food Networks (AFN). These networks function through efforts to establish holistic, sustainable, and locally-based food systems by linking the consumer to the production process. Some examples of these efforts include food co-ops and community gardening. Through direct connections with nature, these networks pose both an ideological opposition and alternative to industrialized agriculture. Many proponents of AFN claim that our connections to food are universal, citing the fact that everyone, regardless of race/ethnicity, class, gender and other social differences, has to eat. However, despite the fact that eating is a basic human requirement, uneven access to food persists, attesting to the very real existence of social inequality. Given that social differences are reinforced through the food system, how does one’s positionality influence the emotional experience of eating? Do current AFN address the variegated experiences of different individuals and groups when developing alternatives? Do these alternatives equally benefit all people? These questions are addressed in a recent journal article I read that highlights the importance of feminist perspectives on food movements.

In the article, the authors work through a feminist lens to discuss why emotion and affect are important factors to consider when developing projects that draw on peoples’ personal connection to food. It introduces important ideas regarding the problematic nature of programs that report universal ideas about these connections. It also expands the traditional definition of ‘access’ to consider emotions as principle (yet not sole) indicators of behavior. For me, one of the most interesting parts of the paper was the description of choice as “a fluid process that is continually varying through an extensive set of material relations that are particular to the time-spaces in which a specific judgment is taking place.” The recognition of social experience, both physical and emotional, as complex, discursive, and constantly changing has been one of the biggest influences on me this semester as I begin to understand the meaning of feminism in geographic research. Through this appreciation, we can start to see larger power structures that might otherwise seem omniscient as fragmented, malleable, and able to be transformed. Initially, for me, this was mind-blowing! My undergraduate experience seemed like it was filled with ominous visions for an impending apocalyptic future (I majored in geography and political science), but reading this article and beginning to understand this approach to research creates hope for the future, as it challenges the way I think and do research. This speaks to the importance of feminist thought in creating social change that positively influences the future of food movements.