Fluid Identities in Fishline’s Food Bank (working paper)

Keywords: hunger, volunteerism, food bank, care geographies, desire-centered research
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

This article explores the food bank as a space where networks of care are catalyzed when those who have experienced diminished agency over food intersect with practices that align themselves with the commitments of mutual aid. I draw from five years of work with and relationships within North Kitsap Fishline (NKF), a 50+ year-old market-style food bank and multi-service center in Kitsap County, WA. Specifically, I examine those who are engaged with the food bank as both “client” and volunteer, paying particular attention to the organizational preconditions that give rise to this fluid identity.

Many food banks have policies against “client” volunteering, reinscribing–whether intentionally or not– the limiting binary that separates “helper” from “helped,” “giver” from “receiver,” despite the call from food scholars and activists that efforts be made to fill food banks with those who have lived experiences of hunger (Pine, de Souza, and Baumgartner, 2022). However, many food banks—Fishline among them—do not. What might we learn from these spaces in terms of practices and policies that, in effect, lend themselves to desire-centered representations and narratives concerning those who both use and contribute to the food bank?

Illustrated through the interviews with multiple people, I argue that tiny shifts in food bank policy–the acceptance of “clients” as volunteers, being one– can flip the script that pens these spaces as inescapably rooted in notions of white, neoliberal charity and contribute to the growing chorus of feminist ethics of care scholarship that seeks to disrupt preconceived notions around who, exactly, cares.