Food and carcerality: From confinement to abolition

Abstract Carceral spaces—such as neighborhood zones of police surveillance and plantation prisons that exploit incarcerated labor—reflect and reproduce systems of oppression that are also present in the food system. The state regularly polices poverty instead of addressing how racial capitalism perpetuates the lack of access to basic needs like healthy food. Conversely, the food system relies on carceral practices to secure disciplined labor by weaponizing the possibility of deportation and wielding the threat of violence to maintain control over racialized undocumented workers. But there are also seeds of struggle for the abolition of penal logics and institutions by incarcerated people and their allies on the outside. These include efforts to transform eating and food work in prison, reimagine food justice as an anti-carceral social movement, and use resistance tactics like hunger strikes. In this special issue introduction, we address these connections and set the stage for all the articles by asking: What does carcerality offer to theorizing and understanding the food system, food cultures, and food relations? And, what does a critical look at food offer toward understanding—and eventually abolishing—carceral systems? We offer theoretical touch points that connect food justice work to long-standing prison abolition organizing while introducing the major themes and contributions of each article included in the issue. We end with a reflection on our aspirations for the future of food studies.