Relational Foodwork: Young People and Food Insecurity

Abstract

This paper explores the interdependency of food relations through young people's accounts of food insecurity. Drawing on ethnographic research with a youth urban agriculture program in Camden, New Jersey (USA), I show how young people articulate experiences of food insecurity through the lens of maternal foodwork, describing efforts to support mothers who are struggling to provide in the context of poverty. As these teens articulate efforts to share foodwork with mothers, they not only challenge common conceptions of generational feeding relations but also reveal the inadequacy of individualizing approaches to the autonomous food consumer.