Abstract
Uncovering Food Poverty in Ireland: A Hidden Deprivation is a research monograph, the core of which is based on semi-structured qualitative interviews with forty-two participants documenting their experiences using foodbanks in Dublin. After a brief introductory chapter, the book proceeds by offering two chapters which effectively review the literature both internationally and in the Irish context while also defining and distinguishing between key terms. In doing so, a complex and nuanced picture of food poverty emerges and Drew's analysis across chapters two and three demonstrates how experiences of food poverty, far from being discrete, are in embedded within experiences of social security, or a lack thereof, in general. Chapter three in particular makes strong links between food poverty and experiences of poverty and deprivation in general and demonstrates how groups such as lone parents, who are perennially overrepresented in poverty statistics, are likely to be overrepresented with respect to need in the context of food poverty also. Using Carney and Maître's (2012) food poverty indicator, chapter four draws on EU SLIC and OECD data to offer an original analysis which looks at food poverty trends over time in the Irish context while also offering a comparison with the EU 15. Chapter four is an important chapter in terms of offering a broad backdrop against which the experiences documented in chapters five and six play out.
Chapters five and six relay the qualitative data and together represent what are undoubtedly the heart and soul of Drew's project. As an overarching framework, Drew deploys a pathways approach which effectively documents how the people interviewed for his study first found themselves experiencing deprivation in the context of food and how they found their way through the food poverty landscape in trying to have their needs met. The analysis presented in these chapters is robust and the data Drew draws upon are rich, detailed and evocative. The testimony given by the research participants continually exposes experiences of food poverty as being located within and linked to many other facets of experience such as debt, unemployment, disability, housing, and inadequate levels of social assistance. Moreover, the data demonstrate a hierarchy of need, of which, food often sits at the bottom. The complexity of food poverty emerges and there are clear examples of food deprivation being unevenly dispersed across families as parents go without so that children can eat, medication is often gone without, people go to bed and wake up hungry, special occasions foster a sense of dread and money lenders are often an unwelcome reprieve. Underlying all of this is a palpable sense of the shame, stigma and personal failure that the respondents take on. When one considers that the testimony captured in Drew's work stems from a recent study and not from a historical document, it is difficult not to be continually dismayed if not surprised by the grinding precarity that underpins the experiences of the respondents and this too is noted for the effect it has on the mental and physical well-being of those who took part in the study. The book finishes by sketching the policy drivers of food poverty, locating these within failings of social policy in general, before documenting what some of the responses to food poverty have been thus far and what they might need to be in the future.
As a piece of critical scholarship, this book offers an important intervention. I have argued elsewhere for the importance of research based on lived experience as part of a holistic evidence base (Whelan, 2022). Uncovering Food Poverty, adds to the cannon of research of this type. This is important in general but even more so in the Irish context where research like this is arguably only beginning to emerge. Moreover, the book offers a robust macro analysis with which to frame the qualitative reporting that comes later. This is important as it demonstrates the complementary and interlocking nature of different evidence types and serves to strengthen the powerful testimony that remains at the core of the book. Furthermore, by centrally placing voice in the form of testimony, Drew shows that the poor have agency and are not simply the passive recipients of policy and this evokes a sense of testimonial justice as given by Fricker (2007).
There is a danger in siloing poverty into discrete forms such as food poverty, energy poverty, hygiene poverty and so on. The danger is twofold in that on the one hand it allows for a number of discrete micro responses to the macro phenomenon that is poverty. The second problematic aspect is that such responses almost always come from the third sector and not the state who effectively get to wash their hands of things like food poverty by leaving it to various charities to meet the need. However, Uncovering Food Poverty avoids reinforcing these scenarios by positioning food poverty as a texture of the overall experience of poverty. For Drew, food poverty cannot and should not be divorced from poverty in general and if food poverty is to be meaningfully addressed and ultimately eradicated, poverty as whole needs to be addressed. Well written and accessible, Drew's book deserves to be widely read and deeply thought about. It will be of interest to students and practitioners who are studying or working in the social sciences or social care.