Caring in unequal worlds: Tracing the hopes and troubles of Community Food Initiatives in Sydney

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to reflect on how paying attention to care might help us understand the hopes and troubles that shape Community Food Initiatives (CFIs). By attending to two domains of care-thinking - (1) relationality and connection and (2) more-than-human entanglements - the chapter traces the insights these areas of care scholarship offer for thinking about how communities are constituted and the complexities of caring in unequal worlds. The chapter draws upon data from a research project that documented Community Food Initiatives across metropolitan Sydney, Australia, in 2019. The chapter draws on an in-depth analysis of two initiatives, the Addison Road Community Centre Organisation (ARCCO) Food Pantry and Five Serves Produce Community Support Agriculture Scheme (CSA), to reflect on how paying attention to care might help us understand the hopes and troubles that affect CFIs in unequal worlds. Paying attention to care as a vital practice constituting communities of CFIs reveals the expansive communities involving both human and non-human others that are cared for, cared about, and cared with CFIs.