The Food Bank Fix: Hunger, Capitalism and Humanitarian Reason
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports 2019 The Food Bank Fix: Hunger, Capitalism and Humanitarian Reason Joshua David Lohnes West Virginia University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd Part of the Human Geography Commons Recommended Citation Lohnes, Joshua David, "The Food Bank Fix: Hunger, Capitalism and Humanitarian Reason" (2019). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 3935. https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/3935 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by the The Research Repository @ WVU with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you must obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Dissertation has been accepted for inclusion in WVU Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports collection by an authorized administrator of The Research Repository @ WVU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Food Bank Fix: Hunger, Capitalism and Humanitarian Reason Joshua David Lohnes Dissertation submitted to the Eberly College of Arts & Sciences at West Virginia University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geography Bradley Wilson, Ph.D., Chair Karen Culcasi, Ph.D. Trevor Harris, Ph.D. Maria Perez, Ph.D. Cheryl Brown, Ph.D. Adam Pine, Ph.D. Department of Geology and Geography Morgantown, West Virginia 2019 Keywords: Food Waste, Charity, Hunger, Capitalism, Humanitarianism, Moral Economy, Crisis, Corporate Food Regime Copyright 2019 Joshua Lohnes Abstract The Food Bank Fix: Hunger, Capitalism and Humanitarian Reason Joshua Lohnes Drawing on a five-year institutional ethnography of Humanitarian Food Networks (HFNs) in West Virginia, this dissertation explores the moral, political and economic place of the food bank in the corporate environmental food regime. I develop the concept of the food bank fix to theorize the paradoxical relationships between the state, the shadow state, food corporations, local charities and food banks that tie HFNs across the United States together through humanitarian reason. I argue that food banks damp the grinding contradictions of a society awash in food surpluses even as a significant proportion of the population remains at risk of hunger. To buttress this argument, I analyze the geographic process through which the moral impulse of those working to address hunger at the local level is subordinated to institutional logics that resolve crises of overproduction and manufactured food scarcity for a globalized and increasingly integrated food system. I demonstrate how diffuse powers from across this system become concentrated and negotiated at the food bank scale, where an awkward combination of altruism, profit seeking, compassion and rulemaking maintains humanitarian feeding lines in place and linked across space. Theorizing the food banking fix shines a light on one of the glaring contradictions in our food system, namely that regulating food surpluses is itself generative of the food scarcity essential to market rationalities. Acknowledgements I am grateful to all those who shaped this research into the thoughts that I present in this manuscript form. A special thank you to food charity directors who took time out of their busy schedules to help me understand the complexity of their work. Thank you to staff at Mountaineer and Facing Hunger food bank for trusting me to study and represent your organizations, and for providing feedback and correction along the way. Members of Conscious Harvest Cooperative in Morgantown kept my thinking on alternatives to dominant charitable food models at the forefront of my mind throughout this project and helped advance my thinking on moral economies, value, gifts, solidarity and mutuality within our complex food system. Special thanks to Dewey, Ted and Mary Hastings for making such a project possible and to Justin Power, Annie Stroud, Andrew Sylvester, Anna Withrow, Allyson Hoch, Megan Govindan, Adam and Kendra Webster, Rick Landenberger, Evan Fedorko, Ashley Reece, Karen Allen, Christine and Ryan Wallace, who all helped shoulder the burdens of my idealism. This research would have been impossible without the wonderful people in the WVU Food Justice Lab. Many were there for the planting, watering and pruning of the WV FOODLINK project. The fruits of this collective ethnography are theirs as much as mine. Chad Spade, Derek Stemple, Ally Sobey, Tyler Huling, Jessica Foster, Frank Lafone, Clinton Davis, Dillon Muhly- Alexander, Luisa Diaz-Torres, Hilary Kinney, Jessica Crum, Colin Lopez, Tyler Cannon, Gerardo Valera, Rebecca Speer, Amanda Stoner, Caleb Davis, Mohamed Ali, Zachary Summerfield, Sarah Campbell, Jed Debruin, Heidi Gum and Alanna Higgins it has been a pleasure working with you. A special acknowledgement for Amanda Marple and Thomson Gross for co-navigating the intersection of work and graduate school in the lab with me. Greg Elmes’ digital cartography class brought us together in Fall 2014 for the what became the long haul and I’m grateful for that too. I also want to acknowledge the funders that made WV FOODLINK possible starting with Kim Tieman at the Benedum Foundation who first understood the potential of mapping the charitable food landscape in West Virginia for food system change. Thanks also to Cyndi Drennan and Renee Steffen at the Sister’s Health Foundation, Bob Boone at the McDonough foundation and Marian Clowes at the Parkersburg Area Foundation. Thank you to all those involved in securing the funds for the USDA Appalachian Foodshed Project, and for helping me to think about this project in light of the many other food access initiatives at the regional scale. My graduate colleagues provided joy and helpful relief in the midst of material and institutional precarity. Christabel Devadoss, Dave Knieter, Park Muhonda, Maingi Solomon, Jenn Smith, Clinton Davis, Paul O’Keefe Cate Johnson, Kevin Kuhn, Sera Matthews, Josh Wixom, Jessica Dewitt, Jon Burkhart, Kristin Degraauw and Alex Dye I’m thankful that you were there. Along this dissertating journey I also benefited from the counsel of those who had been on it before. Thank you to Jay Aultman-Moore, Joel Beeson and Trey Dunham for providing perspectives on life from the other side. Geography faculty at WVU also helped calm the tremors iii and anxiety of the neoliberal academy. Thank you for the collegiality and for inviting me to balance this work with all of life’s other priorities. Members of my dissertation committee were a constant presence throughout this exercise. Adam Pine, thank you for taking the time to advise me when we happened to be in the same place, despite the distance you have been a formative part my thinking. Cheryl Brown, thank you for inviting me to work on the Appalachian Foodshed Project and sharing an interest in sustainable food futures in West Virginia. Maria Perez, thank you for building confidence in the legitimacy of my ethnographic endeavor and for the regular writing check-ins. Trevor Harris, thank you for teaching me how to think spatially and demystifying quantitative data. Karen Culcasi, thank you for recruiting me to WVU, training me as a geographer and helping me reconcile my research journey from Sinai to West Virginia. Bradley Wilson, thank you for providing me with the intellectual and institutional mentorship I needed to see this project through. I feel privileged to work and learn alongside you, and for the friendship that we’ve developed in the process. Your hope and determination to make the road by walking is inspiring. Thank you to my family who loved me so well throughout this process. Jenna thanks for co-laboring through encouragement, patience and a willingness to carry the emotional and material load when I felt I couldn’t go on. Evie-Louise, Elias and Jude you kept me grounded in the rich reality of everyday life and constantly reoriented my priorities toward my values. I’m thankful that we’ve come to call West Virginia home. I thank God from whom all blessings flow. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................................ v List of Abbreviations ............................................................................................................................... viii List of Tables & Figures ............................................................................................................................. x List of Interviews and Participant Observation ..................................................................................... xii Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 1 I. Problem Statement and Research Questions .................................................................................. 1 II. The Study ......................................................................................................................................