Diet as Choice?: Understandings of Food and Hunger in the Neoliberal Era

Abstract

This dissertation explores understandings of food and hunger in the United States within the sociocultural context of neoliberalism. Using fieldwork conducting in Norristown, Pennsylvania, I critically explore understandings of the diet and link these understandings to the large-scale economic restructuring that has played out since 1980. To provide a backdrop for this analysis, I first detail the history of Norristown and situate the space in present times and a deindustrialized urban center where low-income residents face limited access to affordable healthy foods. Previous to the election of Ronald Reagan, a relatively robust social safety net was in place to assist people living in these situations, but this safety net has shrunk during the era of neoliberalism. Neoliberal policy shifts in food assistance programs serve as a launching point for my analysis of understandings of food. I first consider the remnants of the food assistance bureaucracy and how food programs play out from federal to local levels. I then shift my attention to the increased emphasis on nutrition education programs as a strategy to alleviate the poor dietary status of many who live on fixed incomes. Here, I am concerned with how these programs shift the responsibility for the diet onto the individuals themselves while doing little to ensure proper access to healthy foods. Ideas of individual responsibility also play out among the many volunteers involved in private food charities, and in the food advertisements that can be seen all over the urban space of Norristown. Taken together a complex picture of the diet emerges that is very much reflective of neoliberal ideology.