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California Food Apartheid Project
The California Food Apartheid Project is a research project of Professor Gabriel Valle seeking to understand and explore the historical origins and material realities of food inequality in California. Through the methods of historical ecology, repeat photography, discourse analysis, and ethnography, Professor Valle鈥檚 research engages with the people and places that make up California鈥檚 foodscape. These efforts involve collaborating with farmers, policymakers, community organizers, chefs, and practitioners. If you are interesting in learning about possible student research opportunities, please email professor Valle.
In recent years there has been a growing critique of the use of the term food desert because it fails to recognize the systemic and institutionalized barriers to food marginalized, colonized, and oppressed peoples experience. Food apartheid, on the other hand, is a term used to describe how racism and political power influence the food system. Food activist and urban farmer Karen Washington argues that food apartheid 鈥渓ooks at the whole food system, along with race, geography, faith, and economics.鈥
Food apartheid is best understood as a structure that influence daily life and its forms of intersectional exclusion intersect people across a variety of social positions and involves multiple and compounding forms of exclusion. Globally, food apartheid emerges differently because of unique situated histories, cultures, and institutions. The California Food Apartheid Project is an ongoing research project that studies regions and cities throughout California.
The initial idea for the California Food Apartheid Project came from research that Drs. Valle and Guthey completed for the Center for California Studies at Sacramento State University. The study will be used to inform state legislatures on food access policy.
As the research project matures, we will update this page with publications, data, maps, and photos of our ongoing research.
