A Mass Conspiracy to Feed People: Food Not Bombs and the World-Class Waste of Global Cities

by David Boarder Giles

In A Mass Conspiracy to Feed People, David Boarder Giles explores the ways in which capitalism simultaneously manufactures waste and scarcity. Illustrating how communities of marginalized people and discarded things gather and cultivate political possibilities, Giles documents the work of Food Not Bombs (FNB), a global movement of grassroots soup kitchens that recover wasted grocery surpluses and redistribute them to those in need. He explores FNB's urban the global cities in which late-capitalist economies and unsustainable consumption precipitate excess, inequality, food waste, and hunger. Beginning in urban dumpsters, Giles traces the logic by which perfectly edible commodities are nonetheless thrown out—an act that manufactures food scarcity—to the social order of “world-class” cities, the pathways of discarded food as it circulates through the FNB kitchen, and the anticapitalist political movements the kitchen represents. Describing the mutual entanglement of global capitalism and anticapitalist transgression, Giles captures those emergent forms of generosity, solidarity, and resistance that spring from the global city's marginalized residents.

Genres: Nonfiction, Food, Politics

310 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 21, 2021

Reviews

[Leslie]

This book argues the market economies upheld by global cities rely on waste production to the same extent they rely on capital production. Useful commodities, including food, must become waste to make room for new commodities worth more in the eyes of the market. This keeps the economy pumping. However, the system adds to the growing problem of waste production and ostracizes, even criminalizes, individuals who do not operate within this market system. Here lies the author's main argument.

The argument mainly draws from a soft anarchist group called Food Not Bombs, which takes leftovers from businesses and even dumpster dives for ingredients they can transform into free meals for city residents. Cities essentially criminalize this counterpublic for operating outside market forces, especially through city ordinances prohibiting group-level food sharing in public spaces. Individuals who do not or cannot operate within the market are criminalized further through laws prohibiting squatting, going to the bathroom outside, rough sleeping, etc. Such market logic leads to absurdities such as cities that have enough food to feed hungry residents, but do not distribute that food effectively, or cities that have enough housing for their entire homeless population but prefer to keep those spaces empty for the sake of the market.

Global cities contain various such absurdities and inconsistencies, but rather than call for a complete overhaul of the capitalist system the author argues counterpublics such as Food Not Bombs can exist alongside the market public upheld by powerful states and individuals, albeit uncomfortably. Though their contribution seems small, Food Not Bombs redeems edible food set for destruction to feed individuals who otherwise might have gone hungry--a success for those commodities and individuals society deemed unsuitable, and a reminder that conventions and systems need to be challenged to allow people their full humanity.

"The revolution will be catered!" was one of my favorite lines from this ethnography.

[hanita]

read for class

[Charlie Bavis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like this book, I think the discussion on abject and prefigurative politics are great. I felt though that the analysis stayed within the logic that it seeks to depart from.

[A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic research, information, and stigma-breaking work around abject material (still-useful food goods rendered 'waste' by capitalist structures that depend on excess) and abject subjects (those marginalized in the 'global city'). Wish that there had been more recounting of Giles's participant observation, and less theory.

[Jennifer]

Fairly academic read, but it’s exactly as the title says, and the writing is compelling and cool. Spoiler alert: we live in a ridiculous system, and feeding the hungry from the spoils of its gratuitous waste is an act of disobedience/resistance.

[Grace Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading and learning from this dissertation.