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Title: Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement
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Manufacturer: Viking Adult
List Price: $26.95
Our Price: $2.86
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| Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement by Viking Adult The Real Question: Should no one go hungry? | After reading this book and having worked at a food pantry for a couple of years, my first thought was, "Is the problem of hunger in America, or anywhere for that matter, solveable? I have concluded that it is not a solveable problem, only a manageable one. 90 percent of the patrons of the food pantry I work at are drunks and drug addicts. Many show up completely drunk or strung out on meth. Bear in mind that I have great sympathy for ANYONE who is in need of food. But due to the nature of addiction, I don't believe the problem is solveable in terms of more government handouts. The issue of indignity is nearly a non-issue. Our patrons return day after day, year after year. Everyone is served cheerfully and with great respect. Are we enabling the addictions to continue? Absolutely. Is there an alternative? No.
No adult is ENTITLED to be fed as the food stamp program with its debit cards allows users to pretend. Receiving free food is a hand out. Pretending otherwise is a dis-service to those served and a farce. Having said that, I believe whole-heartedly in charity - not entitlements. And there is no shame in receiving charity as revealed to all in the bible. But should people be encouraged to believe that by virtue of being born this, the richest country of the world, that they are ENTITLED to be fed? Of course not.
The book covered many of the issues of hunger and charity but it was slanted toward the view that "charity is inefficient and undignified" and "entitlements such as larger food stamp allotments are efficient and dignified". The author kept coming back to her point that the real beneficiaries of pantries, kitchens and gleaning are the volunteers in terms of socializing, exercise, feeling good about helping others, learning to be thankful for what one has, etc.. I beg to differ with that opinion. Of course the volunteers benefit but the volunteers are not stupid people. They can see the benefits of their works and would not volunteer if they believed that their work only relieved the government from its duty to feed everyone. I gave the book four stars for covering the history of food charity and entitlements as well as extensive quotes of those within the industry. The book is very well-written and is thought-provoking. | | Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement by Viking Adult Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement | | The item was as represented and arrived promptly. | | Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement by Viking Adult Balanced Diet, Food for Thought. | | This book treats the emergency food system with fairness and offeres a balanced view of the strengths and weaknesses of the national shift toward in-kind food relief. The author does a wonderful job of exposing the problems with institutionalizing "emergency" food programs, while governmental agencies weaken the safety net for the poor. In addition to excellent ethnographic work, the author adds a number of nuggets of historical data to build context and meaning. A must read for those hungry for explainations as to why government had abandoned the needy and ignored the structural problems that produce what the author terms "food insecurity." | | Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement by Viking Adult Offers much for thinkers, carers and activists alike | | Ever felt that you want to help out in the world? Ever felt that you didn't know how? Ever felt you did know how, but it still didn't feel right? Anyone who has experienced these dilemmas should read Poppendieck's stream of thoughts and conversations, collected together in `Sweet Charity.' Subtitled `Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement,' it takes us through the practicalities and realities, and the rights and the wrongs of the movement to feed hungry people in the United States. A country of abundance and plenty, the apparent paradox of hunger is not lost on most of us. Poppendieck takes us into this contradiction and pushes hard to understand it. Take the introduction. The Good King Wenceslas carol is used to present a movement, a movement to feed the poor and hungry of America. But soon enough we find ourselves faced with a question: do these food banks and food pantries, these rescue operations, these places known collectively as `the emergency food system,' make our society kinder but less just? Does the kindness of Wenceslas betray those who believe in a long-term vision of economic justice? Poppendieck, Professor of Sociology at Hunter College in New York, has worked in charitable organizations herself, helping those who have problems accessing food. This is not an anti-charity book. Rather, it is a book that questions what charity should be, what we should do, and, most of all, what the government must understand. "Charity for all" opens the book with a picture of charity as recreation, down in New Jersey, the Boy Scouts of America sorting through food. It's early Thursday morning in chapter two, this time in Yorkville, NYC, where the newly unemployed jam into a food pantry. Then it's onto Cleveland, Ohio, in chapter three, where unemployment has transformed steel into rust. Then later, to Maine and California, Texas and Illinois, Pennsylvania and Kansas, all images of helping the hungry. So it goes. Poppendieck has been around in her attempts to unravel the `second tier' of food distribution in the USA. And this is what her travels told. That emergency food has seven deadly `ins': insufficiency, inappropriateness, nutritional inadequacy, instability, inaccessibility, inefficiency and indignity. This septet is used as a framework to clarify the problems of the emergency food system. At the core is the belief that hunger should not exist in America and that dealing with it through ad hoc private sector schemes, however well-meaning, is simply not good enough. But through this comes the author's sometimes disorienting perception that those who work with emergency food are as much confused as the rest of us. And that, in the main, these people are good people. Janet Poppendieck's great strength is to place the individual in a moral dilemma while at the same time pushing us into a community, a society, wherein the solution lies: "a powerful movement for justice and equality." And she allows us to reflect upon what many might have thought but never said: that "emergency food actually contributes to the problem it tries to solve." Readable and sympathetic, `Sweet charity' allows us all the freedom to reflect on society, justice, and the politics of hunger. This book offers much for thinkers, carers and activists alike. | | Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement by Viking Adult A must-read for anyone concerned with social justice issues. | | Janet Poppendieck's thoroughly researched book, Sweet Charity: Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement, deserves its reputation as the "hot" book among those who work in hunger advocacy. Janet pricks our conscience; she helps us see that direct food relief, alone, is not the answer. It may make us feel better to hand a bag of food to a hungry person on Sunday, but what will happen on Monday? The private sector has institutionalized emergency relief; not only has this not adequately helped those who live at the edge of hunger because they lack the money for sufficient food, but it has allowed us to believe we have solved the hunger problem. By gleaning fruit, participating in food drives and serving in soup kitchens, we have allowed ourselves to be taken "off the hook," and we haven't assumed responsibility for the larger issue of advocacy for systemic social change and the role government must play. Ending hunger in this country will take a multi-pronged approach. Ms. Poppendieck's book pushes us to go beyond the simple solutions and become advocates for those whose voice has not been heard. | | Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement by Viking Adult Book Description | | Our country is changing its collective attitude toward poverty. Government support is out; volunteerism, workfare, and private charity are in--with a vengeance. Sociologist Janet Poppendieck studies this watershed through the lens of emergency food programs. Traveling the country to work in soup kitchens and "gleaning" centers, the author puts faces on these volunteers and the recipients of their good works. Sweet Charity? reports from the front line: from the "clients," who endure endless humiliations for meals too small to feed their families, and the well-meaning volunteers, whose enthusiasm cannot overcome the underlying causes of all the misery they witness, to the directors who find their homegrown programs becoming more and more "successful" while wondering if they are not in some way contributing to the very problem they're working so hard to solve. Timely and provocative, Sweet Charity? is the most persuasive argument in recent years that America cannot win a war on poverty with stopgap measures and empty rhetoric. |
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