The Social Practices of Food Bank Volunteer Work

Richard Philip Lee,Caroline Coulson,Kate Hackett

doi:10.1017/s1474746421000555

Abstract

The on-going rise in demand experienced by voluntary and community organisations (VCOs) providing emergency food aid has been described as a sign of a social and public health crisis in the UK (Loopstra, 2018; Lambie-Mumford, 2019), compounded since 2020 by the impact of (and responses to) Covid 19 (Power et al., 2020). In this article we adopted a social practice approach to understanding the work of food bank volunteering. We identify how ‘helping others’, ‘deploying coping strategies’ and ‘creating atmospheres’ are key specific (and connected) forms of shared social practice. Further, these practices are sometimes suffused by faith-based practice. The analysis offers insights into how such spaces of care and encounter (Williams et al., 2016; Cloke et al., 2017) function, considers the implications for these distinctive organisational forms (the growth of which has been subject to justified critique) and suggests avenues for future research.

Highlights

The on-going rise in demand experienced by voluntary and community organisations (VCOs) providing emergency food aid has been described as a sign of a possible social and public health crisis in the UK (Loopstra, 2018; LambieMumford, 2019), compounded since 2020 by the impact of Covid 19 (Power et al, 2020)
Guided by the data, interpretations and critiques of food banking, our analysis focused less on the concept of situated wellbeing, and more on the social practices that comprised the work of food bank volunteering1
As with our discussion of intersections between the practices of volunteers and people using food banks, intersections between volunteers and managers are critical to the performance of practices, leading us to consider the social practices of organisations (Schatzki, 2005; Feldman and Orlikowski, 2011)

Summary

Introduction

The on-going rise in demand experienced by voluntary and community organisations (VCOs) providing emergency food aid (including food banking) has been described as a sign of a possible social and public health crisis in the UK (Loopstra, 2018; LambieMumford, 2019), compounded since 2020 by the impact of (and responses to) Covid 19 (Power et al, 2020). According to Williams et al (2016), four critical narratives of food banking have emerged: food banking depoliticises food insecurity issues; it enables the state to retreat; it contributes to the subjectification of ‘the poor’; the charitable ethos assuages guilt rather than prompting active engagement. It has been suggested that food banking is representative of the ‘depoliticalisation’ of food poverty through the ubiquity of charitable institutions (Dowler and Lambie-Mumford, 2015). The retreatment of the state (local, regional, nation) – in the UK significantly hastened by the implementation of austerity measures from 2010 onwards – has been cited as a driver of shifting responsibility for addressing issues of poverty to VCOs (Caplan, 2016; Garthwaite, 2017; Lambie-Mumford, 2019; MacLeod et al, 2019). The creation of places of ‘neediness’ – and the use of voucher systems – has led to criticisms of food banking as contributing to the stigmatisation of people living in poverty (Carson, 2014) through an active production

Methods

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Discussion

Conclusion