The logics of food consumption in pandemic: experiences of low-income households with children in Greater La Plata during the ASPO / DISPO (2020-2021)

Abstract

The food situation among the working classes has been affected recently, because of the economic crisis as well as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this context, based on qualitative research in La Plata area, we analyze the novel features of food consumption in low-income households made up of children, focusing on the practical and situated senses that model specific family consumption arrangements. It highlights a scenario of ruptures and partial continuities with respect to the previous situation that contributed to the configuration of food worlds in scenarios of social inequality. In this sense, within a broader framework of economic hardship that popular households were experiencing and that was already having an impact on household consumption, new features associated with the unusual worsening of the economic situation of families, restrictions on mobility for making purchases, and the mobilization of short-term strategies to manage shortages were superimposed, and the mobilization of short-term strategies to manage shortages (such as the multiplication of sources of access to food - which led to the articulation of mercantile and non-mercantile logics of supply - and the intensification of practices such as “price shopping” and maximizing food preparations).