Thesis title:
Making the difference: friendship, geographies of care and food insecurity
Abstract:
There are suggestions that our social world is shrinking under austerity, as the spaces that support social interaction (from play groups to libraries) continue to close (Hitchin and Shaw 2019). Yet intimate social ties may remain crucial to the ways we ‘survive’ austerity. Set within the wider context of austerity, research on food poverty – currently experienced by an estimated 8.4 million people in the UK (The Food Foundation 2016) has begun to explore the role of family and of a range of community support mechanisms in enabling people to cope with food poverty. Much less attention has been paid to friendship, though the support of friends undoubtedly plays a key role in the ‘resilience’ of people facing food poverty. Through in-depth individual and group interviews, this research will focus on friendship as a way to explore how they are able to keep our social worlds large; allow people to survive in food poverty and also provide opportunities for resisting austerity.
First supervisor:
Jon May
Pathway:
8-Urbanisation, Social Change & Urban Transformation
Cohort:
2021-22