Abstract
This chapter analyses the relationship between the growing precariousness of daily life, food insecurity and the measures taken to tackle in Spain. As in other European countries, the administration has addressed the rising social demand for food assistance by strengthening and institutionalising a broad network of non-profit organisations that usually – though not exclusively – manage it under the guidance of the municipal social services. Based on the ethnographic analysis of the food itineraries of a group of people in a precarious situation, this text outlines their lived experiences in Catalonia dealing with the stress of having to meet daily food needs using their own and others’ resources. Due to their flexibility, the food itineraries reflect the changing nature of the practices and knowledge that people deploy in each situation/stage, underlining the importance that all the formal and informal support networks acquire in urban contexts when it comes to managing food assistance.
Keywords
- Food itineraries
- Social inequalities
- Economic crisis
- Food insecurity
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- 1.
AROPE is an indicator developed by the European Union, and refers to the percentage of the population that is at risk of poverty and/or social exclusion.
- 2.
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Acknowledgements
The research on which this article is based forms part a larger research project, ‘The precarisation of everyday life: food (in)security, gender and health’ (CSO2016-74941-P, 2016-19) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport. I am grateful to the Ministry, to the team of researchers, and particularly to the women and men who have agreed to be interviewed for this study. In Memoriam Susan M. DiGiacomo, Ph.D., my colleague in the Department of Social Anthropology, Philosophy and Social Work of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, who translated the final version of this manuscript.
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Gracia-Arnaiz, M. (2022). Other Ways of Eating in Spain: Food Itineraries in a Context of Increasing Precarisation. In: Escajedo San-Epifanio, L., Rebato Ochoa, E.M. (eds) Ethics of Charitable Food. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93600-6_8
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