Essential Workers in the US Food System

2019冠状病毒病导致粮食系统大规模中断，食品工人被感染，工厂关闭，供应链中断，最终导致粮食短缺。在某种程度上，为了避免这些问题，参与食品系统的工人被视为必不可少的，并提供激励和支持，以维持他们的劳动。支持基本劳动者的尝试主要取决于支持的内容和劳动者在保持活跃方面面临的障碍。然而，根据食物系统劳动者的个体特征以及他们的劳动在食物系统中的应用位置，这种支持和这种支持的经历是如何不同的，我们知之甚少。本研究将工作人类学、经济人类学和粮食系统政治经济学的理论联系起来，以了解个体背景下的这些差异如何形成维持粮食系统劳动力供应的支持和障碍。除了为美国博士生提供支持外，这项工作还将广泛传播给学术和非学术受众。这项工作以三个具体目标来解决这一重点。首先，调查人员询问不同类型的工人是如何融入劳动力市场的。接下来，他们质疑工人的经济和生物风险是如何被大流行塑造的。最后，他们询问如何管理风险，以保持食品供应链的正常运转。这项工作的重点是粮食系统的三个节点，它们都由具有不同社会和经济特征的劳动者提供支持：农活；肉类加工业;还有杂货零售。使用调查研究和民族志研究方法，该项目调查了在每个节点中作为一个基本工作者意味着什么，以及作为一个基本工作者如何与不同的身份和个人特征相互作用。该项目将帮助人们了解疫情期间出现的经济和社会脆弱性，形成可推广的见解，推动围绕粮食系统运行的理论和方法创新，找到提高粮食系统稳定性和保障粮食系统工作人员安全的方法。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

COVID-19 led to massive disruptions in food systems as food laborers were infected, shutting down plants, disrupting supply chains, and ultimately causing food shortages. In part to avoid such problems, workers involved in food systems were deemed essential and provided incentives and support to maintain their labor. Attempts to support essential laborers depend critically on the content of support and the obstacles faced by laborers in remaining active. Yet little is known about how such support and the experiences of such support have differed according to the individual characteristics of food system laborers, and according to where their labor was applied within the food system. This research bridges theory from the anthropology of work, economic anthropology, and the political economy of food systems to understand how these differences in individual contexts shaped supports and hurdles to maintaining food system labor supplies. In addition to providing support for U.S. doctoral students, the work will be disseminated widely to academic and non-academic audiences. The work addresses this focus with three specific aims. First, the investigators ask how different kinds of workers are integrated into the labor market. Next, they query how workers’ economic and biological risks have been shaped by the pandemic. Finally, they ask how risks are managed with the goal of keeping the food supply chain working. The work focuses on three nodes of the food system, all supported by laborers with different social and economic characteristics: farm work; meatpacking; and grocery retail. Using both survey research and ethnographic research methods, the project investigates what being an essential worker means in each node, and how being essential interacts with varying identity and individual characteristics. The project will inform understanding of economic and social vulnerabilities as they unfolded during the pandemic to create generalizable insights that will fuel theoretical and methodological innovation surrounding the operation of food systems to find ways to improve their stability and supporting safety for food system workers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.