“It's about how you use your privilege”: Privilege, Power, and Social (In)justice in Berlin's Community Food Spaces

Abstract

This paper explores the role of community food spaces in processes of social change and reproduction. I investigate the mechanisms by which these groups reproduce, exacerbate, or dismantle power relations and socio-environmental injustices. I systematically examine exclusion and inclusion dynamics and assess what shapes diversity of participation and representation. Contending that diversity is not a sufficient indicator of social equity and may overshadow forms of injustice, I unpack the interlocking workings of privilege and power in place and examine innovative ways of developing emancipatory food politics. Drawing upon activist ethnography among community gardens, people's kitchens, and co-operative projects in Berlin, I expose the complex, dual nature of its food activist landscape, characterised by the coexistence of experienced, locally rooted, and openly political projects, and more recent, outsider-led sustainability- and consumption-orientated projects—together embodying the variegated and shifting politics of socio-environmental change in the city and beyond.