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Living with HIV and navigating the work of food security in Kelowna, Canada : an institutional ethnography

University of British Columbia

Using institutional ethnographic methodology, this dissertation explores how 12 people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) go about maintaining food security in Kelowna, a small urban centre in southern British Columbia. Food acts as a lens through which a variety of issues are experienced; these include low income, poor health, and lack of mobility and social support. The paper is organized according to the “work” of being food secure, which encompasses obtaining food (by grocery shopping, visiting the food bank, or growing produce), affording food (by being employed or having income from a government program), being well enough to shop, prepare food and eat, and navigating institutional discourses around HIV and food security. Gregory Bateson’s notion of the double bind provides analytical grounding, as participants frequently encounter situations in which they are bound—physically, financially, socially, or discursively—by competing injunctions that hamper their overall health and food security. One of the main binds, which was experienced by most participants and found in nearly every act of the work of food security, existed in the dichotomy of affluence and invisibility. Kelowna is a very affluent city in which poverty and disease exist but are largely unseen. PLWHA are marginalized in this locale but simultaneously expected to look and act in ways that complement and contribute to the neoliberal capitalist marketplace. Findings build on the scant research on HIV and food security in the global north, and can be extrapolated to similar urban centres in North America, Europe, and Australia.

Text

2014-04-17

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/46486

Interdisciplinary Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCO

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/