“Poverty isn’t a line. It’s a tight knot of social maladies.” –Matthew Desmond, Poverty, By America
“Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast number of poor people, who are aged, diseased, or maimed; […] But I am not in the least pain upon that matter, because it is very well known, that they are every day dying, and rotting, by cold and famine, and filth, and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected.” –Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal
Footwear Security
In its 2022 annual report, the Canadian Centre for Footwear Equity notes that, “since the COVID-19 pandemic began, footwear insecurity in Canada has risen by 21.74%, reaching near-record levels.” In the associated press release, CCFE Co-Executive Directors Daniel Tarsusky and Marie-Ève Talon-Leblanc add, “access to affordable, adequate and culturally relevant footwear represents one of the key factors in the social determinants of health; these numbers, not to mention the fact that most, if not all, shoe banks are operating at capacity or overcapacity, should be concerning to all Canadians.”
The above, of course, is farce, and I offer it for two reasons: One, what follows gets heavier, so a lighter note felt appropriate; and two, I want you to hang on to any sense of incredulousness you feel upon reading the words “footwear security” or “shoe bank”, as I proceed to pull on some threads and examine the meaning of “food security” under neoliberalism, and how it can turn us into what Matthew Desmond calls “unwitting enemies of the poor”.
The Food-Insecuritization of Gaza
Tomorrow marks a grim anniversary: one-hundred days of Israel and the West’s annihilation of the Gaza strip. As you likely know, South Africa on Thursday accused Israel of genocide at the International Court of Justice. (Numerous countries supported South Africa; Canada, cowards that we are, did not.)
At this point, whether or not the situation satisfies the legal criteria for genocide doesn’t matter. It is what it is, and if you have any level of literacy and a heart, I don’t need to tell you. (Or you could just read the words of Israeli officials and leaders.)
When it comes to food, manufactured famine and starvation have been such a part of genocide and ethnic cleansing that The Cambridge History of Genocide, which spans three volumes and nearly two-thousand pages, devotes an entire chapter to its historical context, from Antiquity to the modern day. Nothing new, in other words.
No surprise, then that the current genocide is also using starvation as a weapon of war. In an interview with The New Yorker, the chief economist of the World Food Program recently described the situation as “catastrophic” and “unprecedented”, given the scale and severity. The risk of famine is imminent: The New York Times notes that “90 percent of [the] 2.2 million people [are] facing ‘acute food insecurity’ and a quarter of the population [are] experiencing ‘catastrophic levels of hunger’”.
But chronic hunger and malnutrition had been prevalent in Gaza prior to October, a result of Israel’s repeated military operations, as well as the indefinite blockade, which, as Oxfam reported in 2018, “devastated Gaza’s economy, caused widespread destruction and left most people largely cut off from the outside world.” In 2022, after fifteen years of blockade, 62% of the population required food assistance, according to Unicef. Another bleak statistic, from the same report: “The volume of truckloads entering Gaza in the first five months of 2022, around 8,000 per month, was about 30% below the monthly average for the first half of 2007, before the blockade. Since then, the population has grown by more than 50%.”
I could go on to provide further background for what Israeli historian Ilan Pappé describes as Israel’s – again, and The West’s – “incremental genocide”, but perhaps you get the point. The sustained hunger of the people of Gaza prior to October, as well as the current, dire food crisis, are not organic phenomenona; they have been manufactured.
What use, then, are the words “food security” or “food insecurity” in this context? Palestinians in Gaza are not starving; they are being starved. They do not need food assistance. They need freedom.
Hunger here at home
The above, ghastly example demonstrates one thing we talk about when we talk about food security. But what about here at home?
My thoughts here are two-fold: the term food security, outside of a useful, population-level definition (e.g. climate breakdown threatens food supply due to reduced agricultural yields) can serve to render the very real and relatable human suffering of the poor into something abstract and wonky, akin to other specialized, bureaucratic terminology (securitization, mill rates, etc.); and that it can function as a neoliberal “move to innocence”, i.e. allowing us to feel as if we’re taking the issue seriously – thereby absolving us of our guilt and complicity.
“Moves to innocence”
In their essay, “Decolonization is not a metaphor”, Eve Tuck and K. Wayne propose the concept “settler moves to innocence”, which they define as: “Strategies or positionings that attempt to relieve the settler of feelings of guilt or responsibility without giving up land or power or privilege, without having to change much at all. In fact settler scholars may gain professional kudos or a boost in their reputations for being so sensitive or self-aware. Yet settler moves to innocence are hollow; they only serve the settler.” These evasions, Tuck and Wayne argue, represent a “metaphorization” of decolonization.
In considering food security discourse in wealthy societies like Canada, I sense a similar phenomenon of metaphorization, which you could, in borrowing the framework from Tuck and Waye, describe as neoliberal “moves to innocence”, i.e a manner of discussing the symptoms of economic disenfranchisement (in this case, undernourishment, malnutrition) as the problem and, consequently, as well as a set of actions taken to provide relief for those symptoms (food charity, food distribution, nutrition and behavioral approaches, etc.*) that fail to address root causes.
Those of us in wealthy societies concerned with, or at least inconvenienced by, the plight of the poor can adopt the posture and sentiment of “doing something about it” – forming non-profits and charities, starting food-distribution programs, holding conferences, writing annual reports – without losing any or much of our own wealth and status.
We who?
To qualify, by “we” I mean, well, me and you: Those of us who do not live in poverty or close to it, those without bare cupboards and with the privilege to not only eat, but make choices about what, how and where we eat. Who waste food regularly. Quoting Matthew Desmond again, the “other other half.” And, turning back to Gaza for a moment, those of us whose tax contributions and product and media consumption support the ongoing occupation and genocide.