This Symposium explores the ways in which insufficient access to food materialises experiences of poverty. Ways forward in challenging dominant hegemonies surrounding hunger in wealthy neoliberal nations are considered. Each of the presentations discusses how relevant agencies, communities, and researchers can work together to negotiate dynamics of power, and details challenges in translating research findings into policy and practice. As a whole, this Symposium considers how broader socio-political and economic factors play out in the everyday lives of marginalised groups, and examines how communities, practitioners, and researchers can counteract dominant narratives and create spaces and places of belonging and wellbeing.
Presentation 1 summarizes research with food insecure families and explores practical ways for challenging dominant neoliberal narratives surrounding food insecurity. This presentation details ways in which experiences of poverty can be communicated in a humanizing manner, the value of taking an immersive approach to research, and ways of incorporating values-based praxis into research dissemination. In doing so, we provide a practical exemplar of community psychological theory and values as utilized in real world situations. This presentation highlights the way in which articulating alternative accounts via mechanisms such as social media and popular media platforms can work to deconstruct hegemony, how political agitation can be incorporated, and the need for communities of support in enabling long-term advocacy.
Presentation 2 examines responses to hungry school children and their families in Aotearoa and considers why school-based feeding schemes are proliferating in the current period. This research employs an interdisciplinary narrative research approach across a broad range of materials, including historical resources, policy and mainstream media, and material generated by charities and corporations regarding feeding children in schools. In addition, the everyday lifeworlds of parents feeding their children on low-incomes were explored through interviews. Despite ‘child poverty’ providing a platform to mobilise ameliorative responses to issues such as hunger in schools, ‘child poverty’ renders families, whanau and communities invisible and/or culpable. While seeking to support human flourishing, we suggest caution with activating compassion through the ‘child poverty’ model. Instead she builds on possibilities for supporting children’s rights in congruence with families, whānau and the wider communities within whom children’s wellbeing is inextricably entwined.
Presentation 3 discusses findings from the Harti Hauora Tamariki research project. Specifically, that whānau caring for tamariki Māori (0-4years) who had been admitted to the paediatrics ward at Waikato Hospital were going hungry and had inadequate access to food/meals. The absence of enough to eat while caring for a sick child in hospital heightens the distress, concern and worry that whānau face. Feelings of hunger intensify marginalisation and isolation. We argue that a radical re-shift of public health approaches to include the flourishing of all whānau members is much needed. Delivering meals to support caregivers–who provide much-needed physical and emotional cares for the child–is one such radical solution that is struggling to find traction.