L’économique de la pauvreté au cœur d'une ville prospère : perceptions d'usagers d'aide alimentaire
This memoir takes food aid services in Drummondville, an economically prosperous city, as an observatory to make light of the economic social representations of people living a situation of impoverishment and the way these social representations influence how they appropriate food aid. Therefore, we have worked on three levels of observation of the food aid relationship.   The first level of observation was constructed with social-historic and statistical documents about the city and the food aid environments in order to reveal its social morphology. The second level of observation of the food aid relationship was based upon periods of participant observation within two food aid organizations in Drummondville with the goal of grasping the social interactions taking place there. The third and final level of observation consisted of a series of individual open structure interviews with food aid users specifically selected in order to represent a variety of impoverishment types and social appropriation of food aid.  Among other things, we learn that when the social use of food aid is strictly merchant, it can contribute to the reduction of the social network, harming a potential social appropriation of the economy which would be better adapted to a situation of impoverishment. However, in cases where a merchant social use of food aid is accompanied or is gradually replaced with a use more akin to re-socialisation to the environment, resorting to food aid may promote the development of new social regularities and a renewed social appropriation of the economy. Social representations of the economy and the relation to dominant socioeconomic norms preceding the impoverishment situation become altered after facing a situation of impoverishment. A transformation of the relation to the economy occurs.
Food assistance Economy Social representations Poverty Food security Food banks