Canadian social scientist researchers have frequently pointed out the necessity of understanding food banks and the conceptualization of food insecurity as political in relation to the institutionalization of food banks and their collective interaction with federal, provincial, and corporate bodies. However, a comprehensive understanding of this role must additionally engage with discursive practices at the community level. Food banks, as the source to which hundreds of thousands of Canadians turn each month to receive temporary relief from hunger, offer a wealth of information in this regard.
Through a discourse analysis of documentation produced and collected by a prominent British Columbia food bank, this research investigates how discourses, images, and constructions of poverty and food insecurity influence and are influenced by the policies and practices of providing food relief. Overall, 1391 documents were analyzed, totaling 3285 pages covering the time period from 1989 up to 2008. This thesis concludes that although various understandings of food insecurity exist within the food bank documents, certain understandings are more commonly produced, specifically in the external documentation, as well as in food bank policies and procedures. Commonly produced understandings included an individualized conceptualization of food insecurity and of those who are food insecure and discourses of differential deservedness among food bank users. Policies and procedures included a malleability of food distribution eligibility and a utilitarian guide to the framework of food bank operations. I argue that the reproduction of these discourses, along with the implementation of these particular policies and procedures within the food bank, are key processes through which the possibility of a conceptualization of food insecurity as political is diminished at the individual and community level.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/3046 |
| Date | 17 September 2010 |
| Creators | Carlson, Eleanor Anne |
| Contributors | Matwychuk, Margo Lyn |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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