Evaluating Transition Pathways beyond Basic Needs: a Transdisciplinary Approach to Assessing Food Assistance

Abstract

This article applies the findings of a transdisciplinary research project conducted in 2018–2019 involving food aid beneficiaries, practitioners and academics to evaluate the current food assistance system as operationalized in several high-income countries. Using a well-being framework developed by a participatory study led by the World Bank in 2000, it analyzes the capacity of the current food assistance system – and alternative pathways – to fulfill material, bodily and social well-being, as well as security, freedom of choice and action and interpersonal justice. The results of the transdisciplinary research project show that the dominant pathway currently in place for achieving food security among individuals and households experiencing poverty insufficiently fulfils criteria related to bodily and social well-being and largely fails to provide beneficiaries with freedom of choice and action as well as interpersonal justice. Through ex-ante and ex-post interviews conducted with the participants of the transdisciplinary research project, the article proposes an exploratory analysis of the social learning and empowerment generated through the process. It finds that food aid beneficiaries, practitioners and university researchers modified their empirical policy beliefs, albeit to varying degrees. In terms of empowerment, results suggest participants’ collective empowerment was strengthened, while individual empowerment waned.