Food and Inequality - Qualitative Methods - Women and Gender Studies
Select Current Projects
Reaching Across the Table
Within the field of sociology, how and why we eat together in the 21st century is a growing area of interest. Friends, family, and food are strongly connected in the public imagination. The dinner table, both literally and figuratively, is stereotypically seen as a place that brings people together. The dinner table evokes an often taken-for-granted assumption: we eat together, and it is meaningful.
My dissertation research follows two attempts to build and strengthen community and social connections through shared meals. Data for this project comes from 18 months of ethnographic observations and interviews at two organizations working to address food insecurity. Both organizations have stated goals of addressing food insecurity and building stronger communities, in part through the creation of relationships among diverse groups of people.
The analyses developed in my dissertation tell an important story about how people make (or do not make) social ties. I argue that in order for people to make relationships in these organizations, they needed to intentionally break established social norms about how strangers interact. I also find that the physical space of the organizations, and the role of commensality, were important factors in the facilitation and impediment of creating social ties. I also examine the social construction of “community” in these two spaces, detailing how volunteers and staff in both organizations used “community talk” to create positive narratives about the organizations and their roles in the spaces. I find that volunteer’s also rationalized experiences that defied the community ideology with an adherence to an ideology of meritocracy that resulted in the ostracism and judgment of some of the low-income volunteers and clients at both organizations. I also found an important gendered division of labor within the café space; I analyze how women performed gendered carework in the café and detail an important gendered division of labor. I introduce three concepts to capture this: community emotional labor, embodied welcome work, and interactional body labor.
I currently have multiple manuscripts in preparation using my dissertation data. Please reach out if you are interested in discussing my findings further.
My dissertation research follows two attempts to build and strengthen community and social connections through shared meals. Data for this project comes from 18 months of ethnographic observations and interviews at two organizations working to address food insecurity. Both organizations have stated goals of addressing food insecurity and building stronger communities, in part through the creation of relationships among diverse groups of people.
The analyses developed in my dissertation tell an important story about how people make (or do not make) social ties. I argue that in order for people to make relationships in these organizations, they needed to intentionally break established social norms about how strangers interact. I also find that the physical space of the organizations, and the role of commensality, were important factors in the facilitation and impediment of creating social ties. I also examine the social construction of “community” in these two spaces, detailing how volunteers and staff in both organizations used “community talk” to create positive narratives about the organizations and their roles in the spaces. I find that volunteer’s also rationalized experiences that defied the community ideology with an adherence to an ideology of meritocracy that resulted in the ostracism and judgment of some of the low-income volunteers and clients at both organizations. I also found an important gendered division of labor within the café space; I analyze how women performed gendered carework in the café and detail an important gendered division of labor. I introduce three concepts to capture this: community emotional labor, embodied welcome work, and interactional body labor.
I currently have multiple manuscripts in preparation using my dissertation data. Please reach out if you are interested in discussing my findings further.
Exploring mitigating factors for women
navigating emergency food providers
Building upon findings from part of my dissertation research, I am also working on a project investigating how safety influences low-income and homeless women's ability to access the food they need. Preliminary results suggest that violence or the fear of violence deter women from going to certain food providers and effect their ability to get the food and resources they so desperately need.
I presented the initial findings from this project at the National Closing the Hunger Gap Conference (2019) in Raleigh, NC (September 4-6). Further analysis and expansion of this project is ongoing.
I presented the initial findings from this project at the National Closing the Hunger Gap Conference (2019) in Raleigh, NC (September 4-6). Further analysis and expansion of this project is ongoing.
Learning to Eat the “Right” Way:
Examining Nutrition Socialization from the Perspective of Immigrants and Refugees
Existing studies suggests that immigrants’ dietary quality often declines over time after they move to the U.S., despite public and private efforts to provide immigrants and refugees to the U.S. with nutritional resources. Drawing on two interview-based studies with immigrants (n=30) and refugees (n=8) in North Carolina, we find that these immigrant/refugee communities often have healthy food traditions from their home countries that they want to maintain, but they lack guidance about how to navigate the U.S. food system in order to do so. Our findings question the notion that “good nutrition” is a universal concept; we argue that by focusing solely on the nutritional components of food, rather than approaching dietary behavior holistically, service providers exacerbate the challenges that immigrants and refugees face in continuing healthy food traditions in the U.S. Our analyses extend previous research on food socialization by specifically examining the nutrition socialization process of immigrant and refugees, furthering our understanding of how and why immigrants’ diets change over time.
An article detailing the findings of this study is published in the journal Food, Culture, and Society.
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15528014.2019.1700681
An article detailing the findings of this study is published in the journal Food, Culture, and Society.
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15528014.2019.1700681