Infrastructuring Community Fridges for Food Commoning

Abstract

Beginning in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic repercussions exacerbated food insecurity in the United States. Government-led infrastructure was depleted as a result of a dramatic increase in the number of individuals requesting basic necessities and food aid, and grassroots attempts to alleviate the resource shortage increased. The Community Fridge movement was one of these initiatives that combated food insecurity and food waste. It consisted of local community members sharing surplus food with neighbors via a shared refrigerator placed on a sidewalk. We conducted semi-structured interviews with its 17 users to understand how they practice information, human, and social infrastructuring work, as well as how their core values shaped norms for managing refrigerators and surplus food as the commons in local communities. We discuss how the concepts of commoning and infrastructuring may complement one another, which can help design value-embedded interventions to promote infrastructuring practices that build resilience and sustain commoning practices.