Week 8
feeding the crisis
Key Questions
What is the history of food stamps? How have allegations of fraud been grounds for criminalization for people using food stamps?
What are the ways in which food stamps are paternalistic? How do they control and regulate the food that people eat?
Required Materials:
USDA Food and Nutrition Service, “A Short History of SNAP”
Maggie Dickinson, Feeding the Crisis: Care and Abandonment in America’s Food Safety Net, “The Carrot and the Stick”
Emelyn Rude, “The Very Short History of Food Stamp Fraud in America”
Akhil Saxena, “Ending Paternalism in Food Aid: The Case for Cash Benefits”
Supplementary Materials:
Maggie Dickinson, Feeding the Crisis: Care and Abandonment in America’s Food Safety Net, “Care and Abandonment in the Food Safety Net”
Maggie Dickinson, Feeding the Crisis: Care and Abandonment in America’s Food Safety Net, “No Free Lunch: The Limits of Food Assistance as a Public Health Intervention”
Gwen Moore, “Food Stamps for Filet Mignon? Hardly, Despite What Paternalistic Politicians Say”
USDA Food and Nutrition Service, “What Can SNAP Buy?”
National Conference of State Legislatures, “Restrictions on Use of Public Assistance Electronic Benefit Transfer Cards”
Steven Sheperd and Troy Campbell, “Should Government Assistance Cover Pet Food or Potato Chips? It Depends Who You Ask”
exercise
Type your location into the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Access Research Atlas. Where are food deserts located in your area? Which low-income census tracts are more than ½-1 mile away from a grocery store? Consider how this maps onto histories of racial and economic segregation, along with which communities the incarcerated population is drawn from. How are policing, incarceration, and food access interconnected?