ABSTRACT
T. Lewis and M. Phillipov assert that digital food practices have become so habitual that they often pass ‘unnoticed in people’s daily lives’, as in the case of on-demand food delivery apps focusing on delivery speed, cashless transactions, food quality and customer relationship management. Food justice-related themes of participation, equity and choice can be promoted by disruptive digital initiatives by ‘changing the relationship presumed to inhere between problems and solutions’. Digitally mediated food practices, like all digital practices, are ‘unsettling other dimensions of daily life by introducing new forms of distance, alienation, or even invisibility’. The barriers to participation in community food environments are becoming more porous within emergent, digitally supported food-sharing ecosystems. Food justice extends well beyond the food chain. It embraces struggles against discrimination, exploitation, oppression and social exclusion in food systems. The food-sharing ecosystems presented in the chapter demonstrate the capacity of eaters and growers to exploit the ‘positive double link between grassroots users and technology’.
