Episode 7: Food and/as social reproduction

Broadcast Live on 1 June 2020
Guests: Angry Workers’ Collective, Rebecca O’Connell and The Birkbeck Food Group (Alex Colas and Jason Edwards)

In this episode we discuss food insecurity and the working conditions of food factory workers with guests: Angry Workers’ Collective, Rebecca O’Connell (Reader in the Sociology of Food and Families), and The Birkbeck Food Group (Alex Colas and Jason Edwards).

References and links:

Class Power on Zero-Hours publication by Angry Workers (2020)

Rebecca O’Connell and Julia Brannen blog piece on how the COVID-19 pandemic reveals and exacerbates existing food inequalities.

New book available for free online. O’Connell, R. Knight, A. and Brannen, J. Living Hand to Mouth: Children and food in low-income families. London: Child POeverty Action Group.

MSc Food, politics and Society at Birkbeck University of London

Revealed: The Bullying Allegations and Bad Conditions Behind Your Favourite Ready Meals report by

Emiliano Mellino on 10 April 2020 for Vice.com

We broadcast this episode live on 1 June, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by white police officers in the US and the continual systemic racism and state and police violence against bodies of colour. 

The Global Staffroom’s discussion on questions of social reproduction and care at work within this current moment of COVID 19 are questions intersected with structural injustice.  This moment only serves to further expose the already and ongoing inequality, exploitation and violence that upholds capitalism and the reproduction of hostile, oppressive workplaces and working conditions.  Learning from our discussions with guests here, we hope to learn how we are implicated in re-enforcing these structures and importantly find ways to work against and collectively dismantle them.

In our last issue of Manual Labours we drew on the words of Audre Lorde: “There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”

Here are some links to organisations to donate towards to support the powerful struggle and campaign against white supremacy both in the States as well as other racial justice organisations and initiatives in the UK.

Anti-racism resources + Accounts to follow and support

UK resources for UK-based white / white adjacent people to do the work of educating themsleves and challenging systemic and cultural racism

Black Lives Matter fundraising page

London Black Lives Matter

Mireille Charper, 10 Steps to Non-Optical Allyship

Majonzi Fund

Show racism the red card education resources

75 Things White People Can do for Racial Justice