Including the Voices of Communities in Food Insecurity Research: An Empowerment-based Agenda for Food Scholarship

Abstract

The disempowering manner in which “hungry people” are portrayed in public discourse and the dehumanizing way in which they are treated when they try to provision for themselves demand that scholars create counter frames to subvert the existing portrayal of those experiencing food insecurity. In this paper, we call for a program of research that uses participatory research methodologies to invite, recognize, and represent the voices of people experiencing food insecurity. We argue for an expanded program of food a scholarship that places the experiences, needs, and voices of people experiencing food insecurity in the foreground. Such a program is needed in order to better understand the lived reality of food insecurity, how interventions can be designed for communities as partners in research rather than objects of investigation, and how communities can mobilize themselves for broader environmental change.