Sweet Charity?: Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement

by Janet Poppendieck

In this era of eroding commitment to government sponsored welfare programs, voluntarism and private charity have become the popular, optimistic solutions to poverty and hunger. The resurgence of charity has to be a good thing, doesn't it? No, says sociologist Janet Poppendieck , not when stopgap charitable efforts replace consistent public policy, and poverty continues to grow.In Sweet Charity ?, Poppendieck travels the country to work in soup kitchens and "gleaning" centers, reporting from the frontlines of America's hunger relief programs to assess the effectiveness of these homegrown efforts. We hear from the "clients" who receive meals too small to feed their families; from the enthusiastic volunteers; and from the directors, who wonder if their "successful" programs are in some way perpetuating the problem they are struggling to solve. Hailed as the most significant book on hunger to appear in decades, Sweet Charity ? shows how the drive to end poverty has taken a wrong turn with thousands of well-meaning volunteers on board.

Genres: Food, Nonfiction, Sociology, Politics, Economics, History, Social Justice

354 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1998

About the author

Janet Poppendieck is Professor of Sociology at Hunter College, City University of New York. She is the author of Free for All: Fixing School Food in America; (University of California Press, 2010); Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement (Penguin, 1999); and Breadlines Knee Deep in Wheat: Food Assistance in the Great Depression (Rutgers University Press, 1985).

Reviews

[McKenna Bean · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was written in 1998 but 👏🏽stays👏🏽relevant👏🏽

[Tina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been a staff member at a food pantry for the last three years, and while I enjoy the work, often feel conflicted about the work we are doing, the way we're doing it, and why we're doing it. This is what drew me to this book and Poppendieck touches upon just about all my concerns, especially some of the contradictions within the emergency food world. For example, programs often tout (during fundraising) that their goal is to not have to exist anymore--while building new buildings, starting new programs, and overall just getting larger and larger. It's problematic in that the growth of these programs almost makes it seem okay that poverty is such an issue that the government isn't properly handling. Additionally, it becomes all too easy to see customers as numbers or as a line and to not recognize the conflict of serving high numbers. There's a small celebration of "look at all the people we helped!" that's not always followed with much thought as to why the numbers of people seeking help are increasing. Personally, through my years in the sector, I've also sometimes almost felt like pantries compete to feed more people. Poppendieck acknowledges such contradictions and failures of food programs, but also admits to their necessity in our current society.

I also liked the exploration of the "Seven Deadly Ins" of emergency food programs: Insufficiency, Inappropriateness, Nutritional Inadequacy, Instability, Inaccessibility, Inefficiency, and Indignity.

I want to share a passage about the idea and existence of charity that I enjoyed, even though it wasn't a completely new idea to me:

"Charity is simply not something we offer to people we see as our equals. The transactions in soup kitchens and food pantries undermine our cultural commitments to equality by daily defining people who use emergency food as appropriate objects of charity.

"This definitional process does not stop at the soup kitchen or food pantry door...it is carried outward into the culture. It is communicated by fund-raising literature and appeals from the pulpit. It is implicit in the food drives. It is reinforced by the annual Thanksgiving and Christmas newspaper and television photos of people lining up for holiday meals. It is passed along to the schoolchildren who collect canned goods. In a subtle but persistent manner, it infiltrates our culture with the idea that it is acceptable to have significant numbers of people in our society waiting for food handouts, that such handouts are an appropriate response to their needs, and that these are people for whom a handout at the discretion of the giver is good enough. No wonder that food stamp offices and welfare centers fail to recognize the rights of applicants and recipients. We become a society of givers and receivers, rather than a commonwealth of fellow citizens. Charity erodes the cultural prerequisites for a vigorous democracy."


I would have rated this higher if it were less difficult to read. The concepts were easy, but the style was just dry. It made me worry that people outside the emergency food world probably wouldn't pick this up and stick with it.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an outstnding book that looks at the problem of hunger in the USA. She does not attack the current charity programs, but praises the workers for the work they are doing. She points out that charity is a band-aid and the the true answer to the problem will come through activism to solve it.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an exceptional novel detailing the ins and outs of the issue of emergency food and its role in combatting hunger. Poppendieck has a fantastically clear writing voice, coming across very logically and studiously, almost like a transcript of a documentary, making the flow of concepts and stories flow easily. Beginning with the history of emergency food as we know it today (starting in the 80's but tied into the initial efforts during the Great Depression), a clear timeline is established; "government cheese" distribution required logistics, leading to establishing institutions that were intended to be temporary, leading to cutting in welfare programs because of the "boon" of voluntary time and labor, leading to directors of food banks pleading with the Secretary of Agriculture in a 10 year anniversary luncheon: 'please put us out of business.'

Incorporated alongside the history and statistics of the growth of food banks and those who are served by them are stories of the compassionate individuals who started various organizations and why they volunteer. More importantly, the reality of who is hungry is inscribed in these pages, the sheer staggering numbers of people who rely on "emergency food" week after week.
There are numerous passages that cut to the bone, from the daughter of a food rescuer who 'doesn't remember when Mommy didn't do this,' to a retired director coming back to her pantry six years later and seeing some of the same people still there - this book clearly depicts that the issue of hungry has not gone away, IS NOT going away, and depicts the harsh reality that it will not go away without structural change.

Backing up these arguments are numerous data point. The report that the costs of giving away food surpluses in response to hunger cost the exact same amount as the cuts to food stamps the administration had just enacted. The report that all the volunteer hours worked in food banks across a given year, if paid, would amount to almost $19 million in wages.
Perhaps most telling: that the federal poverty line is derived from what it costs an individual to eat. People are defined as poor if they are hungry. And people are hungry because they are poor.

The book finishes by stressing the importance of advocacy; we cannot keep applying bandaids, we must address the root of the issue and solve inequality. While this book was written over twenty years ago and clearly, the issue of income inequality has only deepened, this only strengthens the argument that something must be done. We cannot keep this going in perpetuity. So if the issue of hunger distresses or upsets you, please volunteer, so you can feel that you've done something - but contribute your voice to the cause so that we can stop needing a waiting list for "emergency food".

[Lianna Gomori-Ruben · Rating 5 out of 5]

This vital book reveals the U.S.'s culture around charity/volunteering to be a coverup for severe government failure. Feeding the hungry has become a way to provide privileged Americans with a sense of beneficence at the expense of poor people's dignity. While emergency food programs do critical work, the solutions to the poverty faced by their clients are located further upstream. Rather than normalizing the existence of hunger, it is the government's responsibility to remedy the systemic failures that render so many of its citizens destitute.

Poppendieck's research is brilliant, eye-opening, and necessary!

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful and relevant

The refrain “eat your x bc children are starving” was actually true after WWII
Food security v hunger
Wording of “temporary” or “emergency” programs
Great cheese mold fiasco
Hillary Clinton speech that we lack own meaning in our life - why people turn to volunteerism
Emergency food creates scenarios where people get food they don’t want
Street sheet in nyc to keep track of open food programs
Having free spaces where ppl can eat together regardless of homeless or not

[Cristina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is nearing 25 years old now, and while some data and trends may be outdated the bulk of this book is
1: an analysis of the history of food pantries and their relationship with government programs, and
2: a deeply thought assessment of all roles intertwined between those relationships. I would say its critical thinking reading for people who are in this field as volunteers or organizers.

[Becca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helpful in the way of getting a look at the history of a thing that seems, to me, to have always been...but that belief is the product of when I was born. Helpful because I'm involved with a food pantry for work. Demoralizing because we have come apart more as a society in the intervening 20 years since this book's publication.

[skye · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was assigned this book to read for one of my college courses. Like most students, I procrastinated reading it until last minute. It wasn't even an issue. It was so readable that I was able to finish it in two days. It captivated me and was one of the leading pieces of education that lead me to discovering my passion for food.

Very highly recommend !!!

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eye opening and disturbing. I'd like to find a book on the same topic with more up to date statistics.

[Mel Stead]

Review from the March 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard:

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blog...

[S Dempsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clear writing and frustratingly still very relevant

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Have emergency food programs, originally meant to supplement an ailing system of public services, gained such traction with volunteers, organizations, and governmental institutions that they not only justify their own existence but simultaneously alleviate the burden of poverty and inequality from the public realm?!

Ms. Poppendieck seems to think so, and does a fantastic job of explaining exactly how and why this is the case!

Looking at emergency food programs from about the 1980's forward, Peppendieck demonstrates how enormous of an industry EFP is and how it has been that such programs continue to swell. The irony in the whole story is that while these programs, their volunteers, supporters and advocates, laud the growth and expansion, it is this same phenomenon which contributes to the societal ill "hunger" that the programs aim to combat. A vicious cycle most certainly!

While much of the book is built around explicating the complexity, and effectiveness of charity programs, at least in terms of front line food distribution, the final chapters of Sweet Charity provide a provocative perspective by to view these programs as not only ineffective in fulfilling their underlying intentions but actually somewhat self-defeating.

Poppendieck, very subtlety builds up a house of cards to come crashing down in the name of the public, and governmental, disregard for social justice and inequality. In turn, she calls for a reeducation of the public to recognize the underlying causes of not hunger but poverty and social inequality.

Sweet Charity? Bittersweet is more like it!

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although a slow read and a little dated at this point (the book was originally published in 1998), this is a fascinating look at and critique of emergency food programs provided by private charities and our increasing reliance on such programs over government entitlement programs which, in principle, view a subsistence-level of nutrition as a basic right and not a matter for charity.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thought provoking but a little dry for my tastes. It reinforced for me yet again that it's hard to find a charity to support that is unambiguously good. In this case Poppendieck's premise is that feeding the hungry is good in the short term but harms efforts to bring attention to or address the underlying issues of poverty and inequality.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok, so I read this book for a class, but it was one of the ones I thought I would have enjoyed even outside the context of grad school. It's really readable, and it raises some very interesting questions about the role of government vs. the role of voluntary organizations in combatting poverty. I will never look at a food drive the same way again.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read, highlights many victories and challenges for the emergency food movement. Her conclusions and prescriptions may make sense to a sociologist but aren't necessarily economically robust. That side of the equation seemed to be missing.

[Kellyann]

http://www.43things.com/entries/view/...

[Mary Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

On my Fall Semester 2010 booklist. Shows how most charity organizations, shelters, food banks don't work and why.

[Laura Skladzinski · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not nearly as good as her book about school food, but I still learned a lot. Still, Poppendieck's style is a bit too scholarly to be an easy read.

[Kevin · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. There are some good points in here but they are hidden by a lot of trite and far to many anecdotes. It also doesn't help that it is outdated.

[Christopher Langer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great primer for those who know little about the history and current (circa 1999) state of affairs of food banks and the emergency food sector.

[Issy Beham · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dated & Biased

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

the definitive counter-argument to why hunger relief status quo isn't working ... or is working to a certain degree but needs major additions and rerouting.