Studies of college student food insecurity emphasize the personal characteristics of students and their individual health outcomes, reflecting trends in public health to encourage individual lifestyle changes. More recent work in public health diverges from this focus to encourage conceptualizing health issues not as individual failings but rather as failures of larger systems that are necessary to support health and well-being, implicating the availability of grocery stores, adequate wages, and other contextual barriers to healthy eating. We argue that college student food insecurity should not be conceptualized in terms of the factors affecting individual students but in terms of how the institutional context of the university both creates the conditions under which some students are more likely to be food insecure and also neglects to address these structural failures. Using the framework of structural violence to examine specific ways that these failures occur and are made invisible in the case of college student hunger, we examine recent changes in universities. Unfortunately, these efforts support the focus on individual efforts and success, which contribute to higher rates of food insecurity for students than the general population.
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Summer 2023
Research Article|
April 21 2023
University Student Food Insecurity as a Form of Structural Violence
Nicole D. Peterson;
Nicole D. Peterson
Nicole Peterson is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and collaborates with communities dealing with changes and inequities around food, health, and the environment.
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Andrea Freidus
Andrea Freidus
Andrea Freidus is the Graduate Director of the dual MA/MPH degree in the Department of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her most recent work includes a rapid qualitative appraisal of frontline workers experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic in North Carolina as well as collaborations on women’s health equity in Charlotte.
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Human Organization (2023) 82 (2): 182–194.
Citation
Nicole D. Peterson, Andrea Freidus; University Student Food Insecurity as a Form of Structural Violence. Human Organization 1 June 2023; 82 (2): 182–194. doi: https://doi.org/10.17730/1938-3525-82.2.182
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