Food for One, but Not for All: Food Access and Collective Identity in the Urban Agriculture Movement
Date
2014
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Producer
Director
Performer
Choreographer
Costume Designer
Music
Videographer
Lighting Designer
Set Designer
Crew Member
Funder
Rehearsal Director
Concert Coordinator
Advisor
Moderator
Panelist
Alternative Title
Department
Bryn Mawr College. Department of Sociology
Type
Thesis
Original Format
Running Time
File Format
Place of Publication
Date Span
Copyright Date
Award
Language
eng
Note
Table of Contents
Terms of Use
Rights Holder
Access Restrictions
Open Access
Terms of Use
Tripod URL
Identifier
Abstract
The urban agriculture movement is part of a growing alternative agrifood movement that attempts to solve social, environmental and economic problems in urban areas by introducing more local, organic and sustainable food into urban food systems. One of the primary goals of the movement is to mitigate a lack of food access in urban areas, especially for underprivileged populations. In this paper, I explore the collective identity of the urban agriculture movement in a major northeastern city in the United States. Through qualitative research conducted on farms in the city, I examine the construction of collective identity among actors in the movement. Collective identity is a dynamic process that is a function of shared attributes, shared goals, and the development of communality within movement communities. I find that through this process of collective identity, certain actors in the urban agriculture movement build boundaries that exclude certain social groups from participating in the movement. Moreover, these boundaries are constructed along existing lines of economic and social privilege. In constructing these boundaries, urban agriculture communities fail to solve issues of food access, and instead exacerbate food related inequality.