Food Justice Undone

Breaks open the privilege and promise of food justice to envision a radical liberatory future
 
Food justice activists have worked to increase access to healthy food in low-income communities of color across the US. Yet despite their best intentions, they often perpetuate food access inequalities and reinforce racial stereotypes. Anthropologist Hanna Garth shows how the movement has been affected by misconceptions and assumptions about residents, as well as by unclear definitions of justice and what it means to be healthy. Focusing on broad structures and micro-scale processes, Garth reveals how power dynamics shape social justice movements in particular ways.
 
Drawing on twelve years of ethnographic research, Garth examines the various meanings of "justice" that motivate people from more affluent, majority-white areas of the city to intervene in South Central Los Angeles. She argues that the concepts of "food justice" and "healthy food" operate as racially coded language, maintaining that health problems in low-income Black and Brown communities can be solved through individual behavior rather than structural change. Food Justice Undone explores the stakes of social justice and the possibility of multiracial coalitions working toward a better future.