Getting Something to Eat in Jackson: An Ethnography of Foodways Among the Homeless and the Poor in Mississippi

• In Event: 496 - Minority Fellowship Program (MFP) Research Session. Issues in Race, Education, and Poverty: Micro and Macro Contexts

Abstract

How do poor and homeless African Americans in Jackson, MS make decisions about what they eat? Because access to food and eating habits are important components of understanding public health, potential solutions to the public health crisis have included attempts to curb people’s diets. These attempts have offered abstracted understandings of food choice and eating habits, ranging from individual choice and lack of adequate information to neighborhood effects (food deserts). Drawing from nearly a year of field work, where I followed more than a dozen Black Jacksonians, I attempt to provide a more integrated response to questions about food choice and eating habits. From my data, I am able to show how various social forces, macro-level structural forces (such as the welfare state, the housing market, and the job market), meso-level factors (such as neighborhoods), individual level factors (such as education and income level), and micro-level interactions and belief systems (such as acquired taste and cultural preferences), converge to shape daily eating decisions.

Author

• Joseph Crampah Ewoodzie, University of Wisconsin-Madison