Hunger Bonds: Boundaries and Bridges in the Charitable Food Provision Field

Building on a field perspective, this article adopts a relational approach that lets us make sense of food charities’ interconnections, relationships and social positioning. I analyse how food charities working with different models of provision do boundary work and resolve the cognitive dissonance arising from simultaneously competing and collaborating. Making use of several semi-structured interviews, I illustrate how Trussell Trust food banks, independent food banks and pantries’ directors mark symbolic boundaries when illustrating their models of provision vis-a-vis other models (e.g. pantries vs food banks) but build symbolic bridges when discussing the ultimate ends of charitable food provision. This strategy lets them resolve the tension arising from two contradictory stances and is representative of what I call ‘hunger bonds’: relationships of cooperation and mutual help that also permit positional returns to be obtained and strategically advance a specific vision of the field order.