Challenging the De-Politicization of Food Poverty

Abstract

Austerity food blogs have come to the fore with the emergence of a neoliberal ideology of austerity, which in Britain has seen cuts to welfare benefits legitimized through individual failure explanations of poverty and the stigmatizing of benefit claimants. The consequence has been to distance ministers from food poverty and de-politicize it. Austerity food blogs, written by those forced to live hand-to-mouth, are a hybrid form of digital culture that merge narratives of lived experience, food practices and political commentary in ways that challenge the dominant views on poverty so re-politicize it. A Girl Called Jack did this by breaking the silence that the stigma of poverty imposes, by personalizing hunger through Jack Monroe's narratives of her lived experience of it and inviting the pity of the reader. Monroe also challenged austerity through practices derived during the struggle to survive and eat healthily on £10-a-week food budget. Her blog resonated powerfully but also revealed a British society deeply uneasy and polarized over modern poverty.