Heterodox Microeconomics: A Spatial Turn for Environmental Health and Just Food System Social Provisioning

Abstract

This paper examines food system social provisioning at low levels of geographic scale to merge the heterodox microeconomic approach outlined by Frederic Lee (2018) and the activist spatial justice methodology of Edward Soja (2010). Combining these two theoretical frameworks blends academia and activism by joining community perspectives with spatial, quantitative and qualitative data techniques to hypothesis test and investigate disparities in social provisioning. Initiating the inquiry with data available at the address level of geography allows the analysis to develop across diverse geographic scales and reveal consistent patterns of inequality. It is argued that these consistencies afford researchers, activists, and practitioners benchmarks for the study and development of transdisciplinary intervention design and implementation. This spatial study of pediatric food allergy frames a practical example of how this approach is applicable across a variety of socioeconomic and environmental health disparities and the pursuit of spatial justice outcomes at local and national levels of social provisioning.