This Project Can be Upcycled Where Facilities are Available: An Adventure Through Toronto’s Food/Waste Scape Michelle Coyne A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO December 2013 © Michelle Coyne, 2013 Abstract At the intersection of food, regulations, and subjective experiences is a new way of understanding the intersection of wasted food—a new category of edibility. This project investigates the reasons for, and impacts of, politically-motivated dumpster diving and food reclamation activism in Toronto, Canada. The research incorporates ethnographic participant- observation and interviews with politically-motivated dumpster divers in Toronto, as well as that city’s chapter of Food Not Bombs. The project primarily asks how so much quality food/waste is thrown away and becomes, at times, available to be recovered, reworked, and eaten. My research constitutes a living critique of the hybrid experience of food and waste where the divisions between the two categories are not found in locations (the grocery store or dumpster), but rather in the circulations of actions and meanings that dumpster divers themselves re-invest in discarded edible food products. My research objectives are: (1) to document the experience of dumpster divers in Toronto as connected to a broader movement of food/waste activism around the world; (2) to connect this activism to discussions of food safety and food regulations as structuring factors ensuring that edible food is frequently thrown away; (3) to contextualize contemporary food/waste activism within a history of gleaning, and in relation to enclosure acts that have left Canada with no legal protections for gleaners nor recognition of the mutually beneficial social relation between gleaners and farmers; (4) to explore dumpster divers’ work as part of the circulation of urban culture within media networks. Ultimately, I isolate alternative gift economies as central to dumpster divers’ critique of industrial food distribution within the commodity systems of global capitalism. This gifting relation proves to be, in part, a nostalgic view of an idealized past. Nonetheless, the gifting relation becomes an ideal linked to broader anarchist communities that ii allows divers to create communal subject identities that exist outside of market relations, made global through communication networks of independent and self-published media. By connecting globally, the small-scale, local actions of Food Not Bombs chapters around the world allow surprisingly few individuals to spread a politic with the potential to impact beyond their limited political circles. This project is theoretically situated at the junction of studies of material culture, food and food waste, and new social movements; I connect political experience in local communities to the circulation of food and waste through urban environments and media networks. For the dumpster diver, edibility is delinked from purchase price and is instead imbedded in systems of power and active resistance. iii Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... iv Introduction: Food Regulations, Safety, and the Dumpster Diving Field ...................................... 1 Diving Through Cities and Lives ................................................................................................ 3 Diving Through Regulation ........................................................................................................ 6 Commodifying Food ................................................................................................................... 8 Food Safety ............................................................................................................................... 13 Canadian Food Regulations ...................................................................................................... 17 Methodology ............................................................................................................................. 20 Plan of Present Project .............................................................................................................. 31 Chapter 1: Food/Waste: Liminal and Mutable Categories of Commodified Food Stuffs ............ 35 Categorization ........................................................................................................................... 37 Food Spaces & Communication ............................................................................................... 42 Commodification & Global Movement .................................................................................... 50 Meaning and Remaking Meaning in the Counterpublic ........................................................... 61 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 64 Chapter 2: Freeganism & Food Not Bombs: History, Distinctions, and Spaces .......................... 69 Contemporary Dumpster Diving ............................................................................................... 72 Waste Management & the Pure Food Movement ..................................................................... 79 Introducing Freeganism ............................................................................................................ 83 Food Not Bombs ....................................................................................................................... 90 Removal of the Commons ........................................................................................................ 95 Gleaning .................................................................................................................................. 102 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 112 Chapter 3: The Social Movement of Food/Waste: The Circulation of Food Not Bombs .......... 115 Urban Circulation .................................................................................................................... 120 Recirculation and food security .............................................................................................. 123 Dumpsters ............................................................................................................................... 127 Kitchen .................................................................................................................................... 134 Servings & Direct Action ........................................................................................................ 136 Bodies Following Food/Waste ................................................................................................ 144 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 147 Chapter 4: Reclaiming Subjects: Dumpster Diving .................................................................... 151 Beginnings .............................................................................................................................. 156 Dual Power .............................................................................................................................. 169 Free-ness ................................................................................................................................. 173 Time ........................................................................................................................................ 174 Quality ..................................................................................................................................... 179 Conclusion: Free-ness Revisited ............................................................................................. 186 Chapter 5: Reading Against Regulations and Creating Counterpublics ..................................... 187 Counterpublics and Self-Regulation ....................................................................................... 198 Internal Debates: Self-reflexivity, Lifestyle Anarchism, and Complex Politics .................... 209 Online Communities: Looking to New York and Long Island ............................................... 218 Zines in Toronto ...................................................................................................................... 224 iv Reading and Writing a Counterpublic .................................................................................... 226 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 230 Epilogue ...................................................................................................................................... 235 Appendix A: Interview Participant Summary ............................................................................. 243 Appendix B: Letter of Consent ..................................................................................................