Food Itineraries in the Context of Crisis in Catalonia (Spain): Intersections between Precarization, Food Insecurity and Gender

Mabel Gracia-Arnaiz,Montserrat Garcia-Oliva,Mireia Campanera

doi:10.3390/socsci10100352

Abstract

This work analyzes the relationship between the precarization of everyday life and the increase in food insecurity in Catalonia (Spain). Based on an ethnographic analysis of the food itineraries of a group of people in a situation of precarity, this article examines their lived experiences under the pressure of having to meet daily food needs. The results show that gender differences are significant in terms of the strategies adopted, particularly in the forms of acquisition and preparation, places of consumption and support networks. Given that women are largely responsible for feeding the household, they are the ones most often managing the attendant difficulties. In situations where access to food depends on diverse and irregular sources, they engage in practices that both protect the family group’s basic need to eat and sometimes compromise their own health, eating less than is usual and/or sufficient, skipping meals or even, on occasion, going hungry. The study concludes that providing food involves a crucial set of knowledge and skills for social reproduction that is not incorporated into existing emergency programs, with specific actions to avoid gender inequality likewise being omitted. The article proposes that both issues be discussed and taken into account in health and social policy. This study analyzes a subject that has scarcely been addressed in Spain. The challenge in investigating food insecurity from a gender approach is not only to make visible the crucial roles of women in food security and their contribution to it but also to show how the process of precarization manifests itself unequally across households.

Highlights

The socio-anthropological literature shows that, the field of cooking can be extremely conservative in some aspects— in relation to edibility and culinary grammar—this does not preclude relevant modifications if the context changes (Fischler1995)
Studies indicate that the impact of the austerity policies implemented by many governments in the wake of the last crisis is an exceptional demonstration of the duality identified by Warde (1997), whereby it is true, on the one hand, that food production is more flexible and particularized than ever; on the other hand, social class, with more fluid boundaries than in previous eras (Subirats 2012), continues to be the main variable explaining differences
In a context informed by economic recession and health crisis, in Spain, the state and regional authorities have normalized a failure to guarantee the fulfillment of fundamental rights and government through uncertainty

Summary

Introduction

The socio-anthropological literature shows that, the field of cooking can be extremely conservative in some aspects— in relation to edibility and culinary grammar—this does not preclude relevant modifications if the context changes (Fischler1995). While the right to food is barely achieved for millions of people in the world’s poorest countries (Messer 2009), international political and economic events in the last two decades have called that right into question in industrialized societies. The political measures adopted from 2008 to 2020 in some European countries, and in Spain, such as cuts to social and health assistance, labor reforms, or temporary and low-paid jobs, have contributed to the transformation, to a greater or lesser degree, of the repertoire of affordable foods, the ways in which they are prepared and consumed, and the reasons why people in a vulnerable situation choose one way or another

Methods

Results

Conclusion