Towards a Dignified Food Security? Discourses of Dignity, Development and Culture in New York City and Bogotá

Contents
Abbreviated Dissertation Summary .............................................................................................. iv
Contents ......................................................................................................................................... v
Executive Summary ...................................................................................................................... ix
The PUREFOOD Programme .................................................................................................... xiv
Author’s preface .......................................................................................................................... xv
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... xvii
Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................ 1
Introduction: A new food insecurity .......................................................................... 1
Introduction .............................................................................................................................................................. 2
The context: A global portrait of crisis, cities, and food ......................................................................... 3
Research questions ................................................................................................................................................ 8
The case studies ...................................................................................................................................................... 9
New York City ............................................................................................................................................................ 9
Bogotá ........................................................................................................................................................................ 12
Social and theoretical relevance ..................................................................................................................... 21
The remainder of this study ............................................................................................................................. 25
Chapter 2 .......................................................................................................... 27
Methodological considerations ............................................................................... 27
Opening remarks: The research philosophy ............................................................................................. 28
The interpretivist tradition ............................................................................................................................... 31
Critical realism ....................................................................................................................................................... 32
Research design ..................................................................................................................................................... 33
Global methodology: The case study ............................................................................................................ 33
Data access methods ............................................................................................................................................ 36
Fieldwork: NYC............................................................................................................................... 39
Fieldwork: Bogotá ........................................................................................................................... 40
Analytical methods ............................................................................................................................................... 42
Interpretive methods ........................................................................................................................ 42
Discourse analysis ............................................................................................................................ 43
Anthropology, ethnography and analysis-through-writing .............................................................. 45
On rigor and quality ............................................................................................................................................. 48
Ethics .......................................................................................................................................................................... 50
Summary: The how of this research ............................................................................................................. 50
Chapter 3 .......................................................................................................... 53
Food security: A grand challenge ............................................................................. 53
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................ 54
Food security: A contemporary ‘grand challenge’ .................................................................................. 54
Generalized thematic shifts .............................................................................................................................. 58
From production-side to consumption-side: The shift to ‘access’ .................................................... 59
From quantity to quantity and quality ........................................................................................................ 61
ASHE, L.M. Towards a dignified food security?
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From poor-country to all-country ................................................................................................................. 64
From rural to rural and urban ........................................................................................................................ 65
Summary: Bases for understanding food security ................................................................................. 66
Chapter 4 .......................................................................................................... 68
The contested discourse space ................................................................................ 68
The food security discourse space: Defined by disagreement .......................................................... 69
Prominent discourses: General frameworks for understanding food security ......................... 71
Productivist (or neo-productivist) framework ......................................................................................... 72
‘Place-based’ or context-dependent framework ...................................................................................... 74
Right To Food (RTF) framework .................................................................................................................... 74
Livelihoods and food security framework .................................................................................................. 80
Food and Nutrition Security (FNS) framework ....................................................................................... 81
The omnipresent pillars: A survey of visual food security representations ............................... 83
Summary: The current food security discourse space ......................................................................... 91
Chapter 5 .......................................................................................................... 93
Perspectives on development .................................................................................. 93
The development literature: An introduction .......................................................................................... 94
Conventional, capitalist, neoliberal or modernization development perspectives ................. 95
Common alternative visions ............................................................................................................................ 98
Radical critique and the postdevelopment perspective ................................................................... 100
Special place of hunger, nutrition and food security in development ........................................ 106
Summary: The variable ideation of development ............................................................................... 109
Chapter 6 ........................................................................................................ 110
The discourse package of food security .................................................................. 110
Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 111
The ‘discourse package’ of food security ................................................................................................. 112
The analysis .......................................................................................................................................................... 113
Looking ahead ..................................................................................................................................................... 114
Chapter 7 ........................................................................................................ 117
The capitalist development discourse ..................................................................... 117
The capitalist development discourse and its dominance in NYC ................................................ 118
Credence in the market ..................................................................................................................................... 122
The food system as economic generator ................................................................................................... 127
Faith in technology, science and expert knowledge ............................................................................. 131
Summary: Capitalist ideology’s firm hold on NYC ............................................................................... 135
Chapter 8 ........................................................................................................ 138
The human development discourse ........................................................................ 138
Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 139
The express human priority .......................................................................................................................... 140
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Preferentiality or prioritarianism .............................................................................................................. 144
Dignity .................................................................................................................................................................... 146
Summary: The permeation of human development discourse in Bogotá ................................. 157
Chapter 9 ........................................................................................................ 158
Development and human rights ............................................................................. 158
Introduction: The transformative power of rights ............................................................................. 159
Human rights in Bogotá: The big picture ................................................................................................ 159
The right to food ................................................................................................................................................. 162
Agency, participation, democracy and empowerment ...................................................................... 169
Summary: Visions of the right to food ...................................................................................................... 172
Chapter 10 ...................................................................................................... 174
Two developments at once? ................................................................................... 174
The co-existence of development discourses in Bogotá ................................................................... 175
Ambiguity of the discursive co-existence ................................................................................................ 180
An example of ambiguity: The PMA ........................................................................................................... 184
Summary: Negotiating development .......................................................................................................... 188
Chapter 11 ...................................................................................................... 190
Culture and food security: An introduction ............................................................. 190
Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 191
Culture and food security ............................................................................................................................... 191
Food culture or foodways ............................................................................................................................... 195
The bogotano particularity ............................................................................................................................ 197
Summary: Culturally particular food securities, Part I ..................................................................... 208
Chapter 12 ...................................................................................................... 209
A culture of anomies .............................................................................................. 209
New York City and the obstinacy of anomie .......................................................................................... 210
Reconnecting and reeducating .................................................................................................................... 215
Rewarding ‘good behaviour’ ......................................................................................................................... 217
Summary: Culturally particular food securities, Part II .................................................................... 219
Chapter 13 ...................................................................................................... 220
The cultural construction of food policy ................................................................. 220
Food-health narratives: Culture’s glaring incursion into policy ................................................... 221
Beyond food itself: Culture that ‘goes all the way down’ ................................................................. 226
Summary: Framing the cultural dimension of food security .......................................................... 228
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Chapter 14 ...................................................................................................... 229
Towards dignified food security? ............................................................................ 229
A renewed invitation to philosophy and normativity ....................................................................... 232
Human rights and dignity: Sublime substance, controversial arguments ................................ 233
A focus on human dignity ................................................................................................................................ 237
Dignity and the Catholic intellectual tradition ...................................................................................... 241
Dignified food security .................................................................................................................................... 243
Making dignity real ............................................................................................................................................ 245
The agentic priority ........................................................................................................................................... 248
Articulating a new vision of food security ................................................................................................ 249
Summary: A new construct for food security ........................................................................................ 251
Chapter 15 ...................................................................................................... 252
Final thoughts ........................................................................................................ 252
Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 253
Limitations of this project .............................................................................................................................. 254
Value of this project and recommendations for ulterior research ............................................... 255
References ............................................................................................................. 259