| How do members of a concerned public mobilize to achieve food security, i.e., access to adequate food supply, affordable food prices, and food "safety"?;This dissertation addresses two interconnected research directions: (1) reframing food security; and (2) post-1989 regime change and economic restructuring in Silesia, Poland as a case study. The first part grounds contemporary discussions of food security in the Cold War and patriarchal ideologies that influenced our system of international human rights, including the right to food. I then develop a theory of food praxis that describes the broad and mobile range of routine and politically engaged food labors entailed in the struggle for food security. Finally, I examine the literal production of food in urban and industrially contaminated locations as one strategy of maintaining some level of local autonomy against external and unreliable political economies. A case study of the Gliwice Chapter of the Polish Ecological Club, set in the urban industrial region of Silesia in southwest Poland, reviews these issues within the local Polish context.;The second part concentrates on an empirical analysis of 356 allotment gardeners in five cities across Silesia and incorporates interviews with local officials and activists in order to test four hypotheses: (1) food praxis is strongly gendered; (2) Polish gardeners cultivate in response to food insecurity across regime changes; (3) Silesians define food security in response to multiple "environmental" risks that include unreliable markets, unstable governments, and severely polluted garden spaces; and (4) urban gardens flexibly respond to critical household needs for food that vary over time.;Formal constructions of human rights discourage household-based workers from engaging in public policy development. Those who address food violences like hunger or poisoning at the family level face social obstructions in translating their knowledge and concerns into formal public action. Urban gardens offer some level of autonomy from political economies that ignore local scale food workers. Food security, however, is a function of balanced risks in the forms of political isolation, economic instability, and urban-based food contamination. Research and advocacy is necessary to understand the risks and increase food workers, voice in defining related public policy. |
