Care-full Food Justice

Keywords: Care, Care-full Justice, Care ethics, Food
Session Type: Virtual Paper
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 4/9/2021 03:05 PM (Pacific Time (US & Canada)) - 4/9/2021 04:20 PM (Pacific Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 31

Abstract

Care has long proved to be a generative framing for scholars wishing to reflect upon the possibilities and pitfalls of food initiatives. This paper develops the concept of care-full food justice and positions it as a helpful framing for understanding the diverse ways people come together to collectively address injustices and care for people and planet in community food initiatives. The paper begins by firstly engaging with the concept of food justice as a well-developed response to the injustices shaping food systems. Secondly, I outline the framing of care-full justice (Williams, 2017) and show how attending to the ethics of care alongside an ethics of justice in food research can be generative of new insights. Positioning care as a vital ethic shaping understandings of food systems is a political task seeking to value the role and potential of care in sustaining our worlds. Thirdly, I apply the concept of care-full food justice to the example of Addison Road Community Centre Organisation Food Pantry. I show how such an application can provide insights into how an ethics of care flows through responses to injustice enacted by the organisation. The paper emphasises that a care-full justice approach enables us attend to the calls for caring justice and just care, to equally value these formative ethics that might guide our analysis and engagement with organisations seeking to grow more just and caring worlds.