Food Security: The Elaboration of Contested Claims to a Consensus Frame

Abstract

This article demonstrates Gamson's claim that behind the apparent agreement implied by ''consensus frames'' lies considerable dissensus. Ironically, the very potency of consensus frames may generate contested claims to the ownership of a social problem. Food security is a potent consensus frame that has generated at least three distinct collective action frames: food security as hunger; food security as a component of a community's developmental whole; and food security as minimizing risks with respect to an industrialized food system's vulnerability to both ''normal accidents'' as well as the ''intentional accidents'' associated with agriterrorism. We show that each collective action frame reflects internal normative variation identified here with Goffman's ''keying'' concept. These keys suggest power differentials in the endorsement or critique of dominant institutional practices. Each frame and associated keys reflect distinct sets of interests by collective actors, such as demands for substantively different applications of science and technology. The prognostic framing of the community food security movement coincidentally holds potential for reducing not only the accidental risks of productivist agriculture but also the uncertainty induced by the risk of terrorist exploitation of those vulnerabilities. The article explores power differentials and variable levels of oppositional consciousness as mechanisms by which keys generate contentious politics within frames while serving as potential bridges between frames. This contested ownership of food security has implications for the associated movements' and organizations' capacity to influence the structure of the agrifood system as well as the broader socioeconomic organization of rural regions.

Comparing food security and food sovereignty discourses

“…However, differences between the discourses remain. Food security is a key discourse of public policy (Mooney and Hunt, 2009), but there is no agreement about how to restructure food systems and which social and technological changes and developments will ensure social justice, environmental sustainability, and social inclusion across scale Maye and Kirwan, 2013;Sage, 2013).…”

Feedlots of the Sea: Movement Frames and Activist Claims in the Protest over Salmon Farming in the Pacific Northwest

“…Relative to environmental conflicts and controversies in particular, the study of framing processes and frame disputes have been extensively used to understand how different stakeholder groups and activists perceive local environmental threats to the community and how they attribute blame to culpable agents, structures, or institutions (Gray 2003;Freudenburg and Gramling 1994;Gunter and Kroll-Smith 2007;Krogman 1996;Messer, Shriver, and Kennedy 2009;Mika 2006;Mooney and Hunt 2009;Robertson 2009;Shriver 2001;Shriver, Cable, and Kennedy 2008;Shriver and Kennedy 2005;Shriver and Peaden 2009;Shriver, White and Kebede 1998;Vincent and Shriver 2009). As defined by Snow and Benford (1992:137), a frame is an "interpretive schema that simplifies and condenses the 'world out there' by selectively punctuating and encoding objects, situations, events, experiences, and sequences of action within one's present or past environment."…”

Public Scholarship and Community Engagement in Building Community Food Security: The Case of the University of Kentucky

“…In the fall of 2004, Mooney offered a special‐topics course that provided a broad overview of food security as three collective action framings: (1) a problem of global hunger, malnutrition, underdevelopment, and dependency; (2) community food security; and (3) risk in relation to food safety and bioterrorist concerns (see Mooney and Hunt 2009). Each framing constituted a module.…”