The Double Binds of Getting Food among the Poor in Rural Oregon

Abstract

An in-depth ethnographic study of low-income rural residents in Oregon shows that they are caught in double binds as their ways of life and their incomes increasingly do not fit with the neoliberal economic order, creating tensions in the ways in which they can fulfill their food needs. The study uses Bourdieu's definition of a double bind as a set of inculcated habits that do not match the changing field in social, economic and political ways, and thus people are not able to live effectively. In this study, we found that interviewees, many of whom have experienced economic and social decline in their lives, exhibit attempts to keep up and strategies particular to their situation that do not fit easily into the neoliberal economy. Analysis of the data shows several important double binds: eating habits that do not fit their nutritional knowledge or their food income; strategizing for material cultural capital on incomes that can ill afford it; use of social networks to survive; and contradictory perceptions of independence set against need for government assistance.