The Moral Maze of Food Bank Use

The foodbank symbolises a changing landscape of social insecurity and welfare conditionality. Attending to decision making within the foodbank system, this article argues that foodbanks, and their referral-system creates a bureaucratic ‘moral maze’ identifying people as ‘deserving’ or ‘undeserving’ of help. Maintaining a moral distance, organised religious food banks are reliant upon a complex outsourcing of moral decisions and walk a fine balance between supply (donations) and demand (use). Within this article, we argue that the foodbank landscape is akin to navigating a moral maze, and that this creates, and justifies decisions of deservingness.

Project Team: Dr Dave Beck (Salford); Dr Hefin Gwilym (Bangor)  

Research Group: CLDR, Digital Society 

Project Funder: Unfunded 

Beck, D., & Gwilym, H. (2020). The moral maze of food bank use. Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 28(3), 383-399. Available: https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tpp/jpsj/2020/00000028/00000003/art00005