Pierre discusses the food insecurity component of the research project « Beyond Volunteering, Relationality: How Does Mutual Aid Organize Itself at the Margins? » with Kenza Mellouki.
Kenza: Hello Pierre! Today, we are here to discuss mutual aid in the context of food insecurity. I will let you introduce yourself.
Pierre: I am Pierre Negaud Dupenor. I am in my second year of a PhD in Communication at the University of Ottawa and currently, I am a teaching assistant at the University of Ottawa. In parallel, I work as a research assistant for the « Mutual Aid at the Margins » project. Starting next January, for the winter session, I will be teaching a course at the University of Ottawa.
Kenza: Thank you. Could you briefly present the research focus you are working on with Frederik Matte ?
Pierre: The food security component aims to analyze the dynamics of solidarity and mutual aid put in place by actors at the margins to meet their food needs. This involves examining the various forms that social and organizational initiatives take, as well as the relational practices that these actors implement to meet their food needs in a context of food insecurity. More specifically, we are interested in initiatives that operate outside formal institutions, such as food banks, private or public charities. We are interested in citizen-led initiatives such as community fridges. These fridges are currently at the center of our interest. They are placed in public spaces where donors and community members store food items that people in the surrounding area in need can come and collect to feed themselves.
As an initiative operating outside formal food aid systems, we are interested in the organization of this practice: what are the relational dynamics? How do these marginalized actors organize themselves to help each other and meet their food needs? When I speak of actors, I refer to marginalized actors.
We are also interested in virtual sharing forums. This is another dynamic that intertwines with community fridges, because community fridges also have their own Facebook pages. We look at users who sometimes use their Facebook pages to announce new food arrivals. We can see a fridge manager saying, « This week, we have this type of food arriving, and you can come and take some, » or beneficiaries who pass through the group to say thank you or ask questions about how the fridge works or about the accessibility of other types of aid, for example.
There are also virtual forums not directly linked to community fridges. These are specialized groups for food aid on Reddit, for instance, where we find different types of users. These can be international students, homeless people, single-parent families, or unemployed people facing serious problems feeding themselves. They come to these groups to leave messages like, « I haven’t eaten in two days, » or « Where do you think I can find food aid, something to eat? » What makes this dynamic interesting is seeing how a wave of solidarity organizes around this question to help this person.
The aid can take different forms. Sometimes, it is informational aid, where someone suggests the person asking the question look at a specific resource, institution, organization, or restaurant that offers free services. In other cases, the aid takes the form of cash donations. Some people might say, « Can we meet at such and such a place to give you a little money? » Aid can also take the form of a mother of family saying, « I cooked meals, I have leftovers at home. Would you like me to offer them to you? » Thus, from a virtual dimension, aid becomes socio-materialized.
In our research, we mobilize these two key concepts: sociality and materiality. How do human beings, who are the marginalized actors, and non-human beings, such as community fridges and virtual platforms, communicate? How do they interact to materially produce any form of aid and to organize themselves?
Kenza: I would like to hear more about the two key concepts you mentioned, namely sociality and materiality.
Pierre: Among the concepts mobilized, we also speak of fridges as boundary objects. Boundary objects in the sense that they serve as a bridge between different actors and different people through a physical object. It is an object that constitutes itself as a connector. Its material dimension connects to achieve a social dimension. That is why we speak of socio-materiality.
And around this socio-materiality and this boundary object, there will be a form of sociodiscursivity, meaning narratives and narrativity will emerge. For example, on Reddit, we see people taking the time to narrate their stories: « I am an international student, I arrived here two years ago and I am in such a situation. » In this narrated story, we see many very interesting elements emerging to give substance to the needs expressed by the person. So yes, sociality is the way in which beings, actors, relate to each other to create social reality.
Kenza: You have then identified that there are many testimonials on these platforms, so the idea when going to the field is to collect more testimonials?
Pierre: Our methodology includes three aspects, notably individual interviews with the actors: fridge managers, volunteers, donors, and beneficiaries of community fridges. We will also hold focus groups with these same people.
Then, we will also conduct participant observation. We want to see what happens around community fridges on the ground. What relational dynamics are created? How do people communicate? Gestures, non-verbal communication, how is it expressed? And so, there is all this that we want to explore through participant observation.
In a third step, we will conduct video tracking. Video tracking is a research technique where we either follow and film some beneficiaries or ask them to put a camera on themselves to see the dynamics surrounding the fridge. It can be us filming on the ground, or it can be the beneficiary filming themselves to make the process less intrusive.
We will also conduct content analysis, particularly on the forums I mentioned. So, we will constitute a corpus of discursive elements, notably testimonials, to analyze them.
We had a first data analysis session with the whole team. This allowed us to clarify the key concepts of our research and to identify new concepts that colleagues had brought up during this data analysis. So, it is a movement, a back-and-forth between the field and the theoretical approach of the research.
Kenza: So, the idea, for you, is both to meet the beneficiary people, but also to have the organizing people who are behind these community fridges?
Pierre: Yes, it is really going to find them in their place of life or work to get a concrete idea of the situation. In addition to the interviews conducted, we also want to see what happens on the ground.
Kenza: It is a super interesting approach! The fact of integrating so many different methodologies means that there will also be results that will be very relevant.
Pierre: Yes, yes, absolutely. It is an integrated methodology that will allow us to access truly diversified data, and we will be able to put all these emerging elements into dialogue.
Kenza: And so, what will be the next step?
Pierre: The next step is to conduct the individual interviews. We are currently breaking the ice, having initial exchange sessions to build relationships with the participating people. Then, it will be the observation sessions on the ground. And finally, we will organize the focus groups.
Kenza: So, let me wish you good luck for these next steps; your method seems very promising. Thank you very much, Pierre!