Abstract
Abstract
This paper focuses on the representation of food bank users through the lens of Garfinkel's degradation ceremony (1956): that is, a communicative work aimed at transforming an individual’s total identity into a lower social identity, by recalling moral indignation, in order to reassert social norms and reinforcing group solidarity.
The aim of this paper is to investigate how representations on users might be put in place in a real life assistance context, as a food bank, and the ways in which this could be framed as a degradation ceremony (Garfinkel 1956): stigmatizing behaviours of the volunteers at the food bank might be framed as a way to reassert the social norm by clearly separating the in-group and the out-group (Goffman 1963): by making the users stay outside waiting, separated from the volunteers, by choosing the food for them without giving space to their desires, by discussing their motives not as contingent and contextual, but as linked to the essence of the individual.
For this purpose, the paper will discuss the results of a qualitative research held in two food banks in Turin, Italy, conducted using participant observation and qualitative interviews with users and volunteers.