"Too Poor to Eat": A Socio-Political History of Food Stamps in the United States, 1964-1996

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dc.contributor.advisorYoung, Nancy B.
dc.contributor.committeeMemberZarnow, Leandra R.
dc.contributor.committeeMemberPerales, Monica
dc.contributor.committeeMemberSchafer, James A., Jr.
dc.contributor.committeeMemberKornbluh, Felicia A.
dc.creatorDrane, Lindsay Nicole Bianca
dc.creator.orcid0000-0002-5499-2151
dc.date.accessioned2020-06-02T04:55:17Z
dc.date.createdMay 2020
dc.date.issued2020-05
dc.date.submittedMay 2020
dc.date.updated2020-06-02T04:55:18Z
dc.description.abstractSigned on August 31, 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson’s Food Stamp Act intended to deal with farmer surplus and provide a more nutritious diet for all Americans. Run by the United States Department of Agriculture, and operated as an agriculture program, food stamps remained separated from Johnson’s War on Poverty legislation. As the politics of the program played out, food stamps became a battleground where politicians, the public, and the media debated whether food access was a right of privilege of all citizens. This dissertation explores the interplay between policy formation and implementation and public organizing around food stamps. In the mid-1960s, it was clear that many Americans lived in starvation and experienced malnutrition. I analyze how anti-hunger activists and grassroots and private organizations helped define food stamp policy by forcing the expansion of more liberal policies like nationalized eligibility standards and the elimination of the purchase requirement. I examine the formation of gendered and racialized stereotypes around work and food. Ideas about gender and race in America informed the pervasive negative stereotypes of food stamp recipients. Opponents of the FSP fought to narrow the parameters of citizenship by proposing legislation to privatize food aid or shift the agriculture program to welfare status. The resulting policies — like strict workfare requirements — punished those people trapped in a cycle of poverty that stemmed not from their individual behavior, but from systematic economic, political, and social inequalities. Despite poor people identifying themselves as workers, they did so in ways that were on the perimeter of traditional American conceptions of work. By claiming their right to eat through federal food aid and pushing the boundaries of ideas about what it meant to work, they tested the limits of citizenship. Receiving food stamps symbolically signaled their worth, autonomy, privacy, and their rights and citizenship status in American society in more tangible ways than previous federal food programs. How they lived, provided for themselves and their families, and what they ate became the center of debates around whether food for survival was a right or a privilege, a debate that still matters today.
dc.description.departmentHistory, Department of
dc.format.digitalOriginborn digital
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10657/6616
dc.language.isoeng
dc.rightsThe author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).
dc.subjectFood Stamps
dc.subjectFoodways
dc.subjectWelfare
dc.subjectPoor
dc.subjectPolitical
dc.subjectFood Politics
dc.subjectStrikes
dc.subjectCollege Students
dc.subjectWomen
dc.subjectElderly
dc.subjectAgriculture
dc.subjectFood Access
dc.subjectGrassroots
dc.subjectNutrition
dc.subjectFarm Bill
dc.subjectFood Studies
dc.title"Too Poor to Eat": A Socio-Political History of Food Stamps in the United States, 1964-1996
dc.type.dcmiText
dc.type.genreThesis
local.embargo.lift2022-05-01
local.embargo.terms2022-05-01
thesis.degree.collegeCollege of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
thesis.degree.departmentHistory, Department of
thesis.degree.disciplineHistory
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Houston
thesis.degree.levelDoctoral
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophy

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