Date of Award

2011

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Program

Geography

Supervisor

Dr. Rachel Bezner-Kerr

Abstract

In Cap Haitien, Haiti, thirty poor urban women volunteered to become participants in a Participatory Action Research project to investigate their own food insecurity. Drawing upon feminist political ecology literature, and combined with recent field work, this research maps the affect of Haiti’s changing food economy on the reproduction of local socio-economic patterns for the procurement of food. Qualitative semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were employed to elucidate the voices of urban female participants to explain how the global food economy and social norms shape the four arenas in which women bargain for food: the household, community, market and institutions. It was determined that intra-household and extra-household bargaining was embedded in wider social and state institutions impacting their strategies, heightening the women’s food insecurity and leaving their suffering invisible to the neoliberal agenda that altered Haiti’s food economy.

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