Critical Urbanization and the alienation of food practices

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to contribute to the debate on the food crisis. In the first part of the text I criticize a reductive conception of food that defines it as an elementary and/or biological necessity. In contrast I define food as one mean by which man can appropriate nature and his own nature. Then I present the critique of everyday life as a possible way of interpreting the food practices and seek to emphasize how this option highlights the incessant struggle between alienation and appropriation that characterizes everyday life and consequently food. Lastly, I try to expose the relationship between the urbanization process and the alienation of the food practices using the concept of critical urbanization and the data collected in fieldworks in the city of São Paulo.