Right to (feed) the city

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the emergence and flourishing of grassroots “food justice” activism in the city of New Orleans in the years following Hurricane Katrina. Its primary goals were (1) to investigate the extent to which food justice and food sovereignty discourses and activism interact with and affect the material and social realities of the frequently low-income communities of color in which they are situated; and (2) to examine whether such activism helps or hinders pre-existing efforts to alleviate hunger, overcome racism, and promote social justice at the scales of the neighborhood and of the city. This research utilized qualitative research methodologies and critical theoretical perspectives from urban geography, critical race studies, and agrofood studies to examine how food activism both constructs and contests racialized subjectivity in an urban context. Through a critical cultural perspective of race and the right to the city, I argue that food projects initiated and maintained by white exogenous groups on behalf of communities of color risk exacerbating the very systems of privilege and inequality they seek to ameliorate. This dissertation argues for a re-positioning of food justice scholarship and

activism, which focuses on systemic change through power analyses and the strategic nurturing of interracial alliances directed by people residing in the communities in which projects are situated