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In this chapter I analyze how the ideals of the Finnish welfare state are experienced in the 2020s by people who live in weak social and economic situations. Charitable food aid and public social services are often seen to epitomize the unreconciled ideals of the charitable ethos versus welfare universalism. This chapter voices grassroots experiences of people who use services from both charitable and public social service institutions. By exploring people’s everyday encounters with these services, the demonstrations of agency within these services, navigations of social hierarchy, and expressions of gratitude in the welfare state context, the chapter highlights both contrasts and connections between food aid and the welfare state institutions. It shows how experienced social rights of people in weak positions are entangled with their individual agency.

This study explores how ethical food consumption is framed in the accounts of ordinary people living in affluent societies, with a particular focus on income differences. Research on ethical consumption often associates ‘ethical’ with the consumption of certain predefined products. This study leaves the question of the content of ethical consumption open for empirical investigation. Further, instead of focusing only on the moment of purchasing, this study considers how people with different income levels relate to both food consumption and waste. The analysis draws from qualitative interviews with 60 people living in Canada and Finland. The analysis identified the techniques, subjects and norms through which the question ethical food consumption is posed by the informants and how they framed these issues with regard to income. The findings underline that ethical consumption is a socially constructed, contested and even internally contradictory discourse. Differences in income do not only mean differences in the role that money plays in food choices but also in what kind of consumption people consider worth pursuing. Further, differences in income dictate differences in how people are morally positioned vis-à-vis abundance. For people with a higher level of income, moral blame is asserted on wasteful consumption habits. For the people with a low income, in turn, it is ethically condemnable to refuse to rejoice at the abundance around us. The findings indicate that even in a society where the rhetoric of choice is prominent both as a right and as an obligation by which people ought to display ethical agency, the ethics of choice is tied to the resources available for consumption. People with a severely low income occasionally enjoy the trickling down of abundant treats and surprises. However, for them, occasional indulgence causes not only pleasure but also trouble.

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Kysymys kohtuullisuudesta ja kohtuuttomuudesta on puhuttanut ihmiskuntaa läpi historian. Tässä tutkimuksessa tarkastelen, millaisena kohtuullisuus näyttäytyy nykyaikana runsauden yhteiskunnassa elävien, tavallisten ihmisten ruokapuheessa. Tutkimuksen aineiston muodostavat Kanadassa ja Suomessa toteutetut yksilö- ja ryhmähaastattelut, joihin osallistui yhteensä 42 henkilöä. Tutkimuksen kumpikin kohdemaa on hyvinvoiva länsimainen kulutusyhteiskunta, jossa ruoan runsauden kysymysten voidaan nähdä kehystävän ihmisten elämää. Analyysin perusteella kohtuullisen ja kohtuuttoman ruoankulutuksen problematiikka paikantuu erityisesti terveyden, tarpeiden ja ruumiin koon kysymyksiin. Ympäristöön ja laajempaan yhteiskuntavastuuseen liittyvät kysymykset jäävät kohtuullisuudesta keskusteltaessa toissijaiseen rooliin. Analyysissä kohtuullisuuden keskeisiksi ulottuvuuksiksi nousivat järkeily, tasapainoilu ja opettelu sekä tolkullisuus ja armollisuus. Kohtuullisuuden tarkastelu paljastaa yhteiskunnassa vallitsevan hyvän ihmisen ideaalin: ihanneyksilö on rationaalinen, oppiva ja joustava, mutta myös kohtuullisuuden vaateissaan kohtuullinen ja itselleen ja muille armollinen. Tulokset osoittavat, että ruoankulutuksen kontekstissa kohtuullisuus on yhä laadullinen määrämitta, jonka avulla ihmiset navigoivat, selvittelevät ja suhteuttavat itseään kysymykseen siitä mikä on tarpeeksi, sopivaa tai järkevää. Terveyteen ja ruumiiseen liittyvänä määreenä kohtuullisuus kytkeytyy erityisesti ruoan paljouteen ja runsauden kanssa elämisen problematiikkaan yksilöllisellä ja lähipiirin tasolla. Kohtuullisen ruoankulutuksen ideaalit normalisoivat ajatusta kontrolliin kykenevästä ja halujansa hallitsevasta kuluttajakansalaisesta. Nyky-yhteiskunnassa tavoitteena on erityisesti yksilön terveys ja ruumiin koko. Kohtuullisuuden tarkastelu paljastaa yhteiskunnassa vallitsevia ristiriitoja ja jännitteitä koskien eettisiä kulutusvalintoja ja nautinnon ja tarpeen välisiä suhteita. publishedVersion

Abstract In contrast with most social theories, which are inclined to see the world and its problems as a matter of scarcity, this paper discusses poverty and religious organizations as actors in the field of poverty alleviation from the viewpoint of excess and abundance. The analysis draws from two essays that deal with the question of excess and excessiveness from the perspectives of social theory and moral philosophy, and applies their ideas in order to understand and reconsider the social practice of food assistance and the role of religious organizations as food assistance providers. This paper suggests that charitable food assistance is an excess rescaling strategy, which brings together food insecurity and food waste and thus makes food excess more desirable and less disturbing. Via the processes of rescaling and decriminalizing food excess, excess becomes a utility and a resource for helping people who suffer from poverty. Religious organizations, in turn, become middlemen in rescaling and decriminalizing excess and transforming it into a virtue.

Purpose Recent decades have witnessed a rise in food charity provided by faith-based and other charitable agencies. Previous research has noted that besides material assistance, these occasions provide a social and communal event for many participants. The purpose of this paper is to examine this notion by exploring how the social organization of breadlines contributes to the social relationships between the food recipients and their experiences of these places as communities, and what qualities these communities eventually develop. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on ethnographic data from four breadlines in one Finnish city. The study approaches the breadlines as queues, that is, social systems that govern waiting, mutual order and access. Findings The social organization of queue practices mirrors the users’ experiences of the breadlines as communities with many concurrent faces: as communities of mutual surveillance and as demanding communities that call for skills and resources from the participants, as well as socially significant communities. The findings show how the practices of organizing charitable assistance influence the complex social relationships between charitable giver and recipient, and how the food recipients accommodate themselves to the situations and social roles available on a given occasion. Originality/value Analysing breadlines as queues and using qualitative data from the everyday assistance events gives voice to the experiences of food charity recipients and allows a more nuanced picture to be painted of the breadline communities than studies based merely on surveys or interviews.

This chapter traces the concept of absolute poverty in the developing EU social policy agenda from the beginning in the 1970s up to the EU 2020 process. Thereby it also scrutinizes whether the concept of absolute poverty or closely related concepts of extreme poverty or homelessness do trigger, accompany or frame distinct policy developments for tackling such severe forms of poverty. It shows that the European Commission is a key player in starting and promoting such policies. While the paradigm of relative poverty takes centre stage in most of the related concerns and developments it can be shown that absolute poverty repeatedly surfaces as a complementary concern, be it at the level of discourse, e. g. during the European Year Combatting Poverty and Social Exclusion, or on the level of instruments, like the European Fund for the Most Deprived.

This article explores what Christmas entails to people with limited consumer options and how they cope in their difficult life situations. Previous research suggests that in the contemporary consumer society in which people construct and maintain their identities by participating in consumer culture, those who lack the means to consume face social exclusion. Secondary consumption is a way for poor consumers to come closer to prevailing consumption standards. Drawing from an ethnographic study of Christmas celebrations in four faith-based food assistance organizations within one Finnish city, this study shows that for secondary consumers, Christmas simultaneously entails both more resources and a more intense sense of social exclusion. Christmas highlights the paradoxical dual position of secondary consumers where they are both excluded from and dependent on the prevailing practices of consumer culture. To cope with their situation, food receivers use different strategies: they may refuse to celebrate, distance themselves from their dependence on charity or reframe their situation by considering the food donations as gifts from God.

Since the economic recession of the 1990s, Finland has experienced the proliferation of charity food aid as a means of helping people who are afflicted by poverty. However, so far little research has been conducted regarding the food aid recipients. This article gives discursive, demographic, and experiential insights into charity food provision and reception in Finland. Drawing on quantitative survey data, online discussion data related to news published on Finnish newspapers’ web pages, and observation and interviews with food aid recipients, this article sheds new light on Finnish food aid recipients from three perspectives. First, public perceptions about food aid often portray food recipients as dishonourable and responsible for their own poverty. Secondly, the survey data shows that the main reason for people resorting to charity food aid is deep economic disadvantage, and further, that there is an unequal accumulation of disadvantage among the food aid recipients, illustrating internal diversity. Third, observational and interview data show that from the food recipients’ perspective, the food aid system has only a limited ability to answer even their immediate food needs, and for the recipients, food aid venues can become not only socially significant, but also socially demanding and emotionally burdening places.

Drawing on an ethnographic study of the food charity venues in a Finnish city, the article explores how food assistance recipients respond to the religious services they are presented with when seeking material assistance from a religious organization. The study shows that the religious services integrated into the food delivery system are rarely directly criticized, but rather responded to favourably. Any criticism of them is expressed through tacit resistance. The reciprocal relationship between receiving food and participating in religious practice remains mostly implicit, the food recipients’ responses to the religious services being framed by the notion of choice, which undermines the possibility of open criticism of the integration of religious services into the food delivery programmes.

This article explores how, for whom, and to what extent religion is part of the reality that people enter into as they seek food assistance from a religious organization. Drawing from an ethnographic study of food assistance places in a Finnish city and applying Lefebvre’s spatial triad as a theoretical approach, the article describes the role of religion in the perceived, conceived, and lived space of charitable food provision in a secular Nordic welfare state. The findings show how the role of religion in the context of food assistance is subject to particular contexts and that this role is socially produced in the practices of the food banks, in the goals of the food providers, and in the lived experiences of the food recipients. The findings suggest that charitable food assistance is a social space where divergent readings of space as either religious or secular are potentially contested. The study provides a novel approach to understanding food assistance with its interconnections with religi...

This chapter provides insights into research on lived nonreligion by exploring how ordinary nonreligious people—living in one neighbourhood in Ottawa, Canada—see themselves and their relations with other people through their everyday food consumption practices. The focus is on how these people present themselves, how they approach negotiations over delicate issues with other people and how they frame their positive visions of living together via food. The findings point to three issues that aid understanding ordinary food consumption as “quasi-nonreligious”: distancing from extreme stances when describing one’s own food choices; navigating influencing others’ food choices in a way that avoids giving the impression of proselytising; and emphasizing sharing, hospitality and reaching out to others through food. By approaching ordinary food consumption as “quasi-nonreligion”, the study shows how stepping back from the questions of the presence and/or absence of religion and focusing on other daily settings may help us to start seeing some of the nuances and complexities of nonreligion in everyday life that otherwise often remain obscure.

This study explores charitable food assistance at the interface between religious organizations and people seeking material assistance. The study aims at understanding the phenomenon from the viewpoint of the food recipients and by taking into account the religious character of the food providers. Against the grain of the ideals of the Nordic welfare state, since the early 1990s, Finland has witnessed the emergence and proliferation of charitable food assistance across the country. In these venues, religious organizations regularly encounter some of the poorest in society. In contemporary society, where religion belongs to the realm of individual choice, people are considered to be entitled to decide whether, where, and to what degree they want to be exposed to religious content and take part in religious practices. Thus, in the context of the last resort material assistance provided by churches and other actors with religious ties, religion has the capacity to promote altruism, but also to provide a source of conflict. The data for this study was collected from four food charity organizations in the city of Tampere, Finland between the spring of 2012 and the spring of 2013. The data consists of observational notes from over seven months of participant observation in four food assistance organizations, interviews with 25 food assistance recipients, and written documents related to the operation of the organizations. The data was analysed with qualitative methods by applying principles of content analysis and grounded theory. The findings of this introductory article are drawn from a meta-analysis of four individual articles that have explored food charity from the recipients perspective, both in terms of religion and with regard to the material and social aspects of the assistance use. The findings of this study portray food assistance as a charitable sphere where assistance is provided only within the available resources, which are disengaged from the needs of the food recipients, and within the terms laid down by the charitable giver, which may include to varying degrees religious participation. The findings demonstrate that food charity has a limited ability to answer the social and material needs of the clients. The additional religious support that some of these organizations offered provided added value for some of the food recipients, but also caused tensions. The recipients of food charity have limited opportunities to influence the activity or to act in a different way, but at the same time their ability to withdraw from participating in the activity is limited. Negotiations over participation in religious activities in the food charity context illustrate these constraints, but also point out the tacit strategies used by the food recipients to voice their views. For the food recipients, religious participation served both as a constraint and as a means to demonstrate agency. The study demonstrates that as food charity providers, religious organizations become actors in the arena of welfare provision, but also in the disposal end of the food system. They engage in an activity that is not only about poverty, but also about the affluence that produces the preconditions of the assistance. Food charity can be regarded as an effort to overcome problems of food poverty and food waste, but it also bears the danger of constructing charity as an appropriate answer to the problems of poverty and of legitimizing the continuous production of waste by routinely turning this excess into a utility of last resort assistance. Emphasizing the provision of religious support over food can be regarded as a way for some organizations to overcome the problems of hands-on material assistance. While the findings indicate that this does not resonate strongly with the wishes of the clients, the religious emphasis of some of the assistance providers could serve as a potential source of religious critique of charitable solutions to food insecurity. The need for food charity is not diminishing, and in the current societal situation in Finland, efforts by non-governmental organizations to help those living in weak social and economic situations are increasingly called for. Therefore, it is important to take into consideration the prevalence of religious actors in this field and the varying ways they manifest their religious identity in their assistance practices. The religiousness of the charity providers influences the practices of the assistance work and adds a layer to the experiences of the food recipients. For religious and other non-governmental organizations participating in charitable food assistance, in turn, the findings provide food for thought in reflecting the multidimensional character of the activity that they engage in, the roles that they assume and are assigned in this field, and the ramifications that their work has for the people whom they aim to serve. Suomeen 1990-luvun laman myötä levinnyt ruoka-apu on viime vuosikymmeninä juurtunut vakiintuneeksi, joskin kansallisella tasolla melko koordinoimattomaksi viimesijaisen aineellisen auttamistoiminnan käytännöksi, jossa uskonnollisilla yhteisöillä on vahva rooli. Tutkimus tarkastelee ruoka-aputoimintaa erityisesti avun vastaanottajien näkökulmasta, ottaen huomioon avun tarjoajien uskonnollisen luonteen. Tutkimus perustuu osallistuvaan havainnointiin neljässä matalan kynnyksen ruoka-apupaikassa Tampereella, ruoka-apua vastaanottaneiden ihmisen haastatteluihin sekä kirjallisiin dokumentteihin. Ruoka-avun hakeminen on sosiaalista toimintaa, joka tarjoaa osallistujille aineellista apua ja merkityksellisiä kokemuksia, mutta myös kokemuksia vaille jäämisestä ja tallotuksi tulemisesta. Avun saaminen vaatii resursseja, ja voi sisältää vaihtelevassa määrin myös uskonnollista osallistumista. Toiset ruoka-avun tarjoajat näkevät uskonnollisen taustansa toiminnan motivaationa, mutta sen käytännölliset ilmenemismuodot potentiaalisena ongelmana, ja pyrkivät näin uskonnollisuuden häivyttämiseen. Toiset puolestaan korostavat hengellistä ulottuvuutta toiminnan keskeisenä päämääränä ja integroivat uskonnollisia tilaisuuksia tiiviiksi osaksi toimintaa. Avun vastaanottajille uskonnollisuuden rooli toiminnan käytännöissä on kaksijakoinen: se tarjoaa osallistujille lisäarvoa ja mahdollisuuksia vastavuoroisuuteen, mutta aiheuttaa myös jännitteitä. Ruoka-avun kontekstissa uskonnollinen osallistuminen näyttäytyy valintakysymyksenä, jossa valinnan mahdollisuus koskee paitsi avun vastaanottajia, myös avun tarjoajia. Elintarvikejärjestelmän ylijäämän hyötykäyttäminen ruoka-apuna on tutkimuksen valossa ongelmallista, sillä ylijäämäruoan määrä ja laatu riippuu lahjoituksista ja siten tarjonnasta, ei avun vastaanottajien tarpeesta. Ylijäämäruoan varassa elävät ruoka-avun vastaanottajat ovat ristiriitaisessa tilanteessa, jossa he ovat samanaikaisesti sekä syrjäytyneitä, että riippuvaisia vallitsevista kulutuskäytännöistä. Ruoka-avun resurssit ovat suuressa määrin sidotut elintarvikejärjestelmän ylijäämään, minkä johdosta toiminnassa ei ole kyse vain köyhyydestä, vaan myös runsaudesta ja yltäkylläisyydestä avun ennakkoehtona. Tutkimus tarjoaa ruoka-apua jakaville yhteisöille aineksia arvioida kriittisesti toimintaa, johon ne osallistuvat, rooleja jotka ne omaksuvat ja joita niille tällä kentällä annetaan paitsi hyvinvointiyhteiskunnan, myös elintarvikejärjestelmän toimijoina, sekä seurauksia, joita toiminnalla on ihmisille, joita ruoka-avun on tarkoitus palvella. Ruoka-avun vakiintumisen seurauksena vaarana on, että avun kysynnän ja tarjonnan taustalla olevat yhteiskunnalliset kysymykset hyvinvointiyhteiskunnan ja elintarvikejärjestelmän ongelmista sivuutetaan. Tutkimuksen tulokset haastavat syvempään teologiseen ja yhteiskunnalliseen pohdintaan syistä ja arvoista pysyvän ruoka-avuntarpeen ja jatkuvan ylijäämätuotannon taustalla.