Non-profits that do community-led food justice work with lower income communities face particular constraints and opportunities. This study examined those constraints and opportunities through participant observation of one such organization and interviews with four other organizations. Findings include the diversity of definitions for “community-led,” assets that can help or constrain the organization, and diversity in defining “scaling up” their organization models and missions. The organizations that heavily focused on lower income consumers noted tensions with the board of the non- profit and lack of engagement of consumers. I conclude by critiquing using language such as “models,” “scaling up,” or “replicating” when doing community-led food justice with lower income communities. I propose using the “scaling deep” framework (Moore, Riddell & Vocisano, 2015) and using Social Network Analysis as a tool for community development and developing alternative food initiatives with lower income individuals and communities.

abstract: ABSTRACT Much attention has been given to food justice in both academic and activist communities as of late. This project adds to the growing discourse around food justice by using creative works produced by members of the black community as case studies to analyze the relationship between food justice and the criminal justice system in their neighborhoods. In particular, this project examines two unique sources of creative expression from the black community. The first is the novel Been ‘Bout Dat, the story of a young boy Fattz, who is born into the projects of New Orleans and takes to street life in order to provide for his siblings and struggling single mother. Written in prison by Johnny Davis it offers a valuable perspective that is combined with historical context and statistical support to construct an understanding of how concepts of food and criminal justice influence each other. The second source is the lyrical content of several hip-hop songs from rappers such as Tupac Shakur, Mos Def, Nas, and Young Jeezy. Comparing the content of these works and the lived realities expressed in both brings new and useful insights about food justice and criminal justice as experienced in poor minority communities. Recognizing this relationship may illuminate solutions to food justice issues through criminal justice reform as well as inform fresh efforts at community renewal. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis History 2017

Creating healthy lifestyles and access to quality, nutritious food for marginalized groups, specifically Hispanics, is becoming an increasing topic of conversation. However, issues of access, availability, lack of initiatives in many areas which allow these individuals to become involved in the local food movement have plagued this population, especially the youth. In recent years, Georgetown, Delaware has become a major immigration hub, seeing large populations of Hispanics migrating to the area. Like many locations which see large numbers of individuals of a particular ethnic group not known to the area, the need for culturally relevant and responsive resources becomes imperative. Considering that youth are a vital part of society and are widely impacted by issues of food insecurity and unhealthy food choices, it is important to address their intentions to become actively engaged in their local food system and the role that their identity as Hispanic youth plays in that intention. To assess Hispanic youth's intentions to engage in their local food system and food heritage, the researcher selected a group of 11 Hispanic youth from Georgetown, Delaware, to participate in a Photovoice project, which called on them to take pictures of items salient to their identity, how they understood their local food system and perceived barriers. Following the two-week photo taking period, youth then participated in two focus group sessions, one to obtain information relevant to the research topic and the other, serving as a member check and to elicit further information. Findings of this study include the idea that cultural identity serves as a major influential factor to youth engagement in the food movement and in food heritage. Cultural identity shapes the attitudes of Hispanic youth towards engaging. Further, attitudes toward food movement involvement and educating others positively impacts youth intentions to engage. Hispanic youth's attitudes toward protecting the authenticity of food and culture serve as an additional influential factor for engaging in the food movement and advocating for food justice. Social pressure from family and peers significantly impacts the food choices and cultural engagement of Hispanic youth. Food system knowledge and awareness contributes to youth attitudes towards the food movement and food and cultural heritage. Lack of knowledge can potentially impede engagement. Lastly, self-efficacy concerning the food movement acts as both a facilitator and inhibitor to youth engagement. However, cultural identity and familial support serve as factors which boost the confidence levels of Hispanic youth to engage in the food movement and food heritage. / Master of Science in Life Sciences / Research points to trends in U.S. food systems leading to led to increased prevalence of processed foods and associated diet-related diseases among marginalized groups, such as Hispanic youth. Impacts of these unhealthy diets have sparked movements toward consumption of local foods. Since groups such as Hispanic youth face greater geographic, financial and cultural barriers to healthy food access, understanding their intentions to engage in their local food system and food heritage becomes important in order to secure and maintain access. In Georgetown, Delaware, the Hispanic population and Hispanic youth populations have increased tremendously since the 1990’s. The need to ensure the food security and access, as well as cultural retention of the youth is vitally important, as the population begins to increase and give rise to new generations of Hispanic youth. In order to assess Hispanic youth’s intentions to engage in their local food system and food heritage, the researcher selected a group of 11 Hispanic youth from Georgetown, Delaware. This group of youth participated in a Photovoice project, which called on them to take pictures of items salient to their identity, how they understood their local food system and perceived barriers. Following the two-week photo taking period, youth will then participate in two focus group sessions, one to obtain information relevant to the research topic and the other, serving as a member check and to elicit further information. The findings of this study indicate that cultural identity serves as a major influential factor to youth engagement in the food movement and in food heritage. Cultural identity shapes the attitudes of Hispanic youth towards engaging. Also, attitudes toward food movement involvement and educating others positively impacts youth intentions to engage. Hispanic youth’s attitudes toward protecting the authenticity of food and culture serve as an additional influential factor for engaging in the food movement and advocating for food justice. Social pressure from family and peers significantly impacts the food choices and cultural engagement of Hispanic youth. Food system knowledge and awareness contributes to youth attitudes towards the food movement and food & cultural heritage. Lack of knowledge can potentially impede engagement. Lastly, self-efficacy concerning the food movement acts as both a facilitator and inhibitor to youth engagement. However, cultural identity and familial support serve as factors which boost the confidence levels of Hispanic youth to engage in the food movement and food heritage. This research study will lend to conversations around food justice, working across cultural differences and youth & community development.

The food justice movement has taken off in recent years. Despite its call for justice in the food system, it has been critiqued as being inaccessible to people who need food the most. The food system marginalizes women, minorities, and low-income people, making these groups the most at risk for food insecurity. Solutions to food insecurity come from both government and non-governmental avenues. This thesis calls for a merger of solutions to food insecurity and food justice in food security justice, and assesses the ability of solutions to food insecurity to confront issues of injustice. Community-based solutions currently have the potential to address issues of justice, as well as providing added benefits of promoting community cohesion and creating new economic spaces. Through a simulation of the SNAP budget and an exploration of the narrative between gang violence and food insecurity in Los Angeles, the necessity for solutions to food insecurity to address justice is established.

This thesis provides an analytical case study of Huerta del Valle Community Garden as a successful model of redefining social capital through not only providing healthy, affordable, high quality produce to a community subjected to the disproportionate consequences of systemic inequality, but also in incorporating a food justice education framework to underlie all development at the garden. Located in the city of Ontario, Southern California – the heart of the Inland Empire, known for its prominence within the nation’s goods movement industry and its landscape of sprawling warehouses – local residents face high rates of poverty, obesity, and a lack of food access. This research identifies the socio-economic, historical factors that led to Ontario as we know it today. I argue that Ontario was founded upon institutionally racist principles, which set the region up for a future of economic disparity. It is through ‘bottom-up,’ grassroots community organizing that deeply engrained structural barriers are most successfully challenged.

Our contemporary American food system has created complex environments for decisions and actions around food, and those decisions have implications for culture, health, natural resources, social relations, and the economy. And yet, as scholars, we do not understand the particulars of how people actually cook for themselves and their families. This study explores how race and socioeconomic class interact with individual experience of "food agency," or personal capacity to plan and prepare meals within one's food environment. It is one stage in a multiphase project developing a comprehensive theory of food agency, applicable in any context; a scale for measuring that agency; and a cooking pedagogy for increasing it. This research was based on an explanatory sequential mixed methods design: a qualitative follow-up to quantitative research (see Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011). It is an in-depth qualitative investigation with low-income participants of color, a population that had previously not been included in the development of food agency theory. The study's population was a mix of Drexel University students and community residents of Mantua, in Philadelphia, PA, and was recruited from Drexel's Healthy Cooking Techniques summer course. Data collection included semi-structured interviews and survey administration, and also utilized food agency scale survey responses. Analysis and results are divided into two papers, one narrative, and one a comparison between quantitative components of the food agency scale and corresponding qualitative data. Narrative analysis reinforces the notion that food agency is incredibly complex and self-referential. People with high self-efficacy around food may feel like they have a high level of agency, even if they can identify ways that societal structures impede them. Mixed-methods analysis reveals aspects of food agency that are not reflected by the scale: specifically, strategies for procuring food; environmental and financial impediments to that procurement; and aspiration for greater self-sufficiency and healthfulness in preparing food. Participants are intentional and skillful in resisting economic and environmental obstacles to feeding themselves. They want to be supported in building skills for that daily endeavor. The food agency scale does not gauge many of the strategies with which they resist obstacles, and therefore might be better cast as a cooking action scale, rather than a measure of comprehensive food agency.

Food is something that we all need to survive but it is not something that we all have access to. In the mid 1990’s, a community-based movement arose to systematically address injustices in access to this basic human necessity. The community food security movement approaches issues of food security at each stage of the life cycle of food to ensure that each stage is sustainable, socially just, and equitable. This study uses this framework to challenge traditional notions of food security by critically examining the economic, social and environmental barriers to food equity in Austin, Texas. Austin is said to be one of the best cities to live in the United States, but not because it is food secure. This study therefore examines the food landscape of Travis County and the accessibility of food resources to meet the food needs of area residents. It utilizes a combination of quantitative analysis of food retail locations, focus groups and surveys to gather information about the food needs of underserved residents in Travis County. / text

Local food networks (LFNs) have engendered a great deal of debate in the food justice community; scholars and activists are dubious about the potential of LFNs to contribute to the subversion of the very hierarchies of privilege that created the need for the food justice movement. Using a case study of the Claremont, California area local food network, I operationalize a definition of LFNs, defining them by the people, activities, and exchanges involved in the local food network. I provide a grounded view of these three facets of the Claremont area local food network to analyze the extent to which the network both perpetuates and subverts hierarchies of privilege. About 40 ethnographic interviews with key players in the Claremont area local food network show that the network is a patchwork of identities, values, goals, methods, interactions, and outcomes. The subversion and perpetuation of hierarchies of privilege occur simultaneously in nearly every part of the local food network, and the network has potential to enhance the subversive aspects to work towards a larger political challenge.

abstract: Residents of the United States increasingly support organic and local food systems. New Social Movement theorists have described alternative agriculture as a social movement that transcends social class. Other scholars have critiqued alternative agriculture for catering to a middle-class, white public. Simultaneously, geographers have identified communities across the United States that struggle with reduced access to healthy fruits and vegetables. In some of these neighborhoods, known as “food deserts,” local groups are redefining an inequitable distribution of healthy food as a social injustice, and they have begun initiatives to practice “food justice.” The overarching research questions of this study are: 1) How do communities become food deserts? 2) How do food justice movements crystallize and communities practice food justice? 3) What are the social outcomes of food justice movements? Using an Ecology of Actors framework, this study analyzes the actors and operational scales of three food justice movements in Phoenix, Arizona. A narrative analysis of historical scholarly materials and other artifacts reveals that, for more than a century, some communities have tried to create minority-operated local food systems. However, they were thwarted by racist policies and market penetration of the conventional US food system. Interviews with residents, garden organizers and food justice advocates living and working in the city create a narrative of the present day struggle for food justice. Results of this work show that contemporary residents describe their foodscape as one of struggle, and carless residents rely upon social networks to access healthy food. Garden organizers and gardeners are creating networks of community gardens, market gardens, and informal farmers’ markets. They are actively transforming their communities’ landscapes with sophisticated garden ecology in an intense urban heat island. However, the movement’s continued success may be threatened. Many new Phoenix-based local food coalitions and national alternative agriculture social movements are now working to alter Phoenix’s foodscape. Composed of well-educated professionals, who have adopted a justice-based language around food, these organizations may unintentionally co-opt the local food justice movements. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Anthropology 2015

abstract: Research demonstrates that the contemporary global food system is unsustainable, and moreover, because some groups carry the burden of that unsustainability more than others, it is unjust. While some threads of food activism in the United States have attempted to respond to these structural based inequalities--primarily those of race, ethnicity, and social class--overall, very little domestic activism has focused on issues of gender. As feminist scholarship makes clear, however, a food movement "gender gap" does not mean that gender is irrelevant to food experiences, social activism, or agricultural sustainability. Building on a framework of feminist food studies, food justice activism, and feminist social movement theory, this dissertation makes the case for "(en)gendering" the domestic alternative food activist movement, first by demonstrating how gender shapes experiences within food movement spaces, and second, by exploring the impact that an absence of gender awareness has on the individual, community, and organizational levels of the movement. Employing a feminist-informed hybrid of grounded theory and social movement research methods, field research for this dissertation was conducted in community gardens located in Seattle, Washington and Phoenix, Arizona during the summers of 2011 and 2012. With the assistance of NVivo qualitative data analysis software, field notes and twenty-one key-informant interviews were analyzed, as were the discourses found in the publically available marketing materials and policies of domestic food justice organizations. This study's findings at the individual and community level are hopeful, suggesting that when men are involved in food movement work, they become more aware of food-based gender inequalities and more supportive of women's leadership opportunities. Additionally, at the organizational level, this study also finds that where food sovereignty is influencing domestic activism, gender is beginning to enter the discussion. The project concludes with policy recommendations for both community gardening and food justice organizations and the detailing of a new concept of "feminist food justice", with the end goal of preventing the food movement from undermining its own potential to secure a "real alternative" to corporate industrial agriculture. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Gender Studies 2013