Abstract
This project explores how domestic hunger is understood and addressed in Aotearoa New Zealand, and the development and institutionalisation of food charity. A charitable solution is at odds with a state’s legal obligations to realise the human right to adequate food of all its citizens, as outlined to in numerous United Nations treaties. It is therefore inconsistent that Aotearoa New Zealand is a signatory to multiple treaties of this kind, yet the dominant model for responding to food hunger is charity. Using a critical qualitative approach and human dignity as a research lens, I explore both the macro-socio-economic context in which food charity exists in the country, and the micro-level lived experiences of those who depend on it.
I start my investigation by exploring the dominant economic model of neoliberalism, including its influences on human dignity—its definition and how it is experienced—before moving onto examining the place food charity has in mitigating, reproducing, and contesting this ideology, and the impacts this has had on the dignity of those it is attempting to assist. I use this as a foundation from which to explore the socio-economic context of Aotearoa New Zealand, beginning with an examination of the country’s historical context, with a focus on the colonisation of Aotearoa and the establishment of capitalism, and the introduction of neoliberal policies. I then evaluate the existence of domestic hunger today and delve into the state’s understanding of food security and the policies it has enacted that both follow and reinforce this understanding. Within this overall framework, I then hone in on the historical development of food charity in the country, concentrating particularly on attitudes towards food charity as well as those who depend on it.
Using this as a contextual backdrop, I introduce the personal experiences of food charity of 55 residents of Ōtepoti-Dunedin, a city in the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand. Using a critical hermeneutic phenomenology and inductive thematic analysis, I organise the stories they shared into three main themes that consider the indignities of: living in poverty; the systems in place to address domestic hunger—food charity and social welfare; and food charity interactions.
Reflecting on both my macro and micro-level analyses, I concentrate on the significance of human dignity in people’s lives, particularly as it relates to how neoliberal tenets have shaped and capitalised on narrow understandings of dignity. I then investigate how food charity has inadvertently amplified neoliberal narratives, focusing on those of social (un)acceptability, (in)dependency, and (un)deservingness, and how the denial of choice, rights, and power relations within food charity spaces has been detrimental to food parcel recipients’ sense of dignity. Finally, I consider how, despite the indignities associated with and experienced within food charities, dignity is also present in the relational components. I then end by reflecting on the place of the human right to adequate food within Aotearoa New Zealand and how it is both advantageous, yet currently unattainable.