Freeganism
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Anti-consumerism |
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Freeganism is an
While vegans avoid buying, consuming, using, and wearing animal products as an act of protest against animal exploitation, freegans—at least in theory—avoid buying anything as an act of protest against the food system in general.Freeganism is often presented as synonymous with "dumpster diving" for discarded food, although freegans are distinguished by their association with an anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist ideology and their engagement in a wider range of alternative living strategies, such as voluntary unemployment, squatting in abandoned buildings, and "guerrilla gardening" in unoccupied city parks.[3]
History
Freegans' goal of reduced participation in capitalism and tactics of recovering wasted goods shares elements with the
Freegans also advocate sharing travel resources.
Squatting
Just as freegans argue food waste should be recovered and redistributed, many argue that unoccupied buildings are a form of "waste" to be reclaimed. Squatting was widespread in Western Europe as well as parts of the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, and activists used squatted buildings not only for housing but also to create community centers, pirate radio stations, or free schools.[26] A widespread crackdown by municipalities closed many squats and legalized the remainder in the 1990s—the moment when freeganism was emerging—and so it is thus difficult to know how many people are involved in this activity.[27] While research with freegans consistently shows that they endorse squatting, in practice, freegan living situations vary, ranging from trading work for rent to traditional home ownership.[1]
Working less
Working less is another component of freeganism. Freegans oppose the notion of working for the sole purpose of accumulating material items. They argue that their need to work is reduced by only purchasing the basic necessities and acquiring the remainder for free from the garbage. According to freegans, not working frees up additional time for political action while avoiding tasks they see as sacrificing valuable time to "take orders from someone else, stress, boredom, monotony, and in many cases risks to physical and psychological well-being".[8] As with squatting, however, the degree of concordance between freegan ideology and practices is variable. In surveys, self-described freegans vary from reporting working only irregularly, working consistently in social justice organizations, and being employed in more conventional, "capitalist" occupations.[5]
Responses and criticism
Sanitation and stigma
Contact with waste is seen as a taboo and socially unacceptable in most developed countries, and freegans are often associated with stigmatized and racialized groups like the homeless or even compared to scavenging "pest" animals like raccoons.[28] Some public health officials, like those in New York City, have explicitly discouraged dumpster diving for sanitation reasons[29] and media coverage occasionally focuses on the "ick" factor of dumpster diving while (explicitly or implicitly) ignoring its political content.[30] This discourse has been deployed more broadly to discredit anarchist movements by claiming they are unhygienic and thus dangerous.[31] While some freegans argue that dumpster dived food is safe—noting it is usually thrown out because it cannot be profitably sold, not because it is no longer edible—others embrace the "dirtiness" of recovered food as a symbolic rejection of capitalist norms.[32] The group freegan.info has made the disgust attached to wasted food part of its messaging, arguing that social disapprobation should instead fall on those who throw out food, rather than those who recover it.[33][34]
Parasitism
Freeganism has also been critiqued both by other radical movements and by mainstream commentators for the fact that its signature practice—dumpster diving—depends on the capitalist food system that freegans claim to be rejecting.[22] A typical response is that freegan practices are not limited to dumpster diving, but include also actions like guerilla gardening, wild food foraging, or sewing or bike repair "skill shares" that are more fully autonomous from the conventional economy.
Racial and class composition
Although activities like dumpster diving or gleaning are traditionally seen as subsistence strategies for the poor, most research on freegans finds that individuals come from middle-class and upper-class backgrounds and have high levels of education (even if their present lifestyles make them low-income).[1][5] Freeganism has also been described as racially exclusive, because freeganism's voluntary association of waste would seem to confirm a "globally ubiquitous racial construction" that people of color are dirty and polluted.[35] As one freegan of color wrote, "I am extremely embarrassed for people to see me diving, because I can tell that I'm not just me, I'm also a representation of black people in general...I got harassed by security several times while diving on my own campus, until my white friends pop their heads out of the dumpsters."[36] In contrast, the portrait of the gender balance of freeganism is more mixed, with some accounts saying groups are majority men and others majority women.[1]
Legality and commercial responses
The legality of freegan practices of reclaiming wasted food, space, or buildings varies depending on local laws around property, trespassing, and waste removal.[37] In some places, like New York City, freegans dumpster dive publicly; in other locations, urban foraging is a secretive activity. In recent years, there have been arrests of people dumpster diving for political reasons in the United Kingdom,[38] Belgium,[39] and France,[40] although in most locations charges have eventually been dropped. These actions could be seen as part of a broader criminalization of acts of survival—like sleeping in public places, sharing food without a permit, or recovering aluminum cans to re-sell—that has affected freegans as well as affiliated groups like Food Not Bombs and the homeless.[14] Freegans report that stores have responded to waste recovery as well, including deliberately destroying products prior to disposing of them,[41] locking dumpsters, or pouring bleach on food to make it inedible. In France, a new national law bans the practice of destroying food in this way.[42]
Impacts
Media coverage of freeganism in the United States peaked around the
See also
References
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8166-9813-4.
- doi:10.1215/00031283-79-2-194. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2006-09-07. Retrieved 2016-06-09.
- ^ "Freeganism in Practice". freegan.info. Retrieved 2016-06-09.
- ISBN 978-0-8014-7329-6.
- ^ S2CID 143263389.
- ISBN 9780143121121.
- ^ "Why Freegan?". freegan.info. Archived from the original on 2016-06-04. Retrieved 2016-06-09.
- ^ a b c "freegan.info". freegan.info. Retrieved 2016-06-09.
- ^ S2CID 143456296.
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- ^ ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-06-09.
- ^ "Trash Tour". Oprah.com. Retrieved 2016-06-09.
- ^ Carlson, Tucker (February 3, 2006). "'Freegans' choose to eat garbage". NBC News. Retrieved 2007-06-21.
- ^ Institute for the Study of Edible Wild Plants and Other Foragables. Wild Foraging Definition
- ISBN 9781904859536.
- ^ Corr, Anders (1999). No Trespassing: Squatting, Rent Strikes, and Land Struggles Worldwide. Cambridge, Massachusetts: South End Press.
- ^ Corman, Lauren (2011). "Getting their hands dirty: raccoons, freegans, and urban "trash"". Journal for Critical Animal Studies. 9 (3).
- ^ Kirpalani, Reshma (2011-08-08). "'Freeganism': Bucking the Spending Trend". ABC News. Retrieved 2016-06-10.
'There are too many uncertainties involved about what the food in the dumpsters have been exposed to,' said spokesman Peter Constantakes. 'We have concerns about the practice mainly because anything that goes into trash has exposure to any sort of food pathogens, including rat droppings, pesticides, or household cleaners that can be a potential health risk.'
- ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2016-06-10.
- ISSN 1467-8330.
- JSTOR 3773853.
- S2CID 146945249.
- .
- ISBN 9780262662017.
- ^ "Freegans of Color?". Vegans of Color. 2008-06-03. Retrieved 2016-06-10.
- S2CID 145110244.
- ^ Gentleman, Amelia (2014-01-28). "Three charged with stealing food from skip behind Iceland supermarket". the Guardian. Retrieved 2016-06-10.
- ^ de Vries, Katja; Abrahamsson, Sebastien (2012-03-27). "Dumpsters, Muffins, Waste and Law". Discard Studies. Retrieved 2016-06-10.
- ^ Goutorbe, Christian. "Hérault : des glaneurs de poubelles au tribunal". ladepeche.fr. Retrieved 2016-06-10.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-06-10.
- ^ Mourad, Marie (2015-05-05). "Food Waste Inspiration: The French Make a Bold Proposal". National Resources Defense Council. Archived from the original on 2016-03-17. Retrieved 2016-06-10.
- .
- S2CID 143262270.
Further reading
- ISBN 978-0-14-103634-2.
- Sundeen, Mark (2012). The Man Who Quit Money. Riverhead Books. ISBN 1594485690
- Barnard, Alex (2016). Freegans: Diving into the Wealth of Food Waste in America. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0-8166-9813-4.
- Lou, Loretta (2019). Freedom as ethical practices: on the possibility of freedom through freeganism and freecycling in Hong Kong. Asian Anthropology.
External links
- Fallingfruit.org/freegan – Falling Fruit's global map of freegan resources
- Trashwiki – Freegan wiki-encyclopedia of dumpster-diving spots
- Freegan.info – 100 pages on freegan theory & practice with events and directories primarily in NYC
- Freegan.at – Austrian Freegan page (English version)