Proposed box for p.93/94 on agency and power
Case study – Scientific attempt to measure agency – and increase community agency by unpacking power
In Cape Town, a group of community researcher accompanied by students from Humboldt-University in Berlin tried to measure agency (Paganini et al., 2021). This process, and the triangulation of food security findings, empowered the community and increased their agency to play a role in communal food dialogues processes. In triangulating, discussing, and contextualising their research results, the co-researcher team realised the importance of active participation in food governance processes through these dialogues.
Agency was measured by identifying five domains for inclusion in our assessment of agency, in line with HLPE: diet sovereignty, food production, food processing, food distribution, and voice in food policies and governance. For each domain, we developed a set of questions corresponding to the type of empowerment an individual can have within a domain. We asked the participants about their perception before COVID-19 and now. An increase in the calculated index would potentially translate into a higher status of empowerment or agency in the respective domain (ibid, p.47)
The adjusted Agency Module for the household survey consists of 16 questions and reflects on individual perceptions of own situations, but also on communal situations pre-COVID-19 and “in these days”. For all domains, we asked if the respondents considered themselves as having knowledge, having the opportunity to make choices (for example on what food one wants to eat or what products to grow), having the power to change at the household level, and having the power to make changes in the community (ibid, p.48).
The survey with more than 1800 households showed that there is a positive relation between having a perceived agency and living in a food secure households. Respondents who live in food secure or mildly food insecure households have significantly more agency than respondents in moderately and severely food insecure households. This proves that there is a relation between food security and having a sense of having agency in the food system. Therefore, the quantitative operationalisation of agency in the Agency Module has potential for future refinement. Furthermore, it indicates that the newly introduced dimension of food security agency is related to the FIES, which measures the dimension of food access of an individual or household. In conclusion, having agency in the food system increases access to food and vice versa (ibid, p.93) Socio-economic characteristics such as age, gender, and employment status only play a minor or no role on agency. Variables which strongly influence agency are education and the place in which the respondent lives. Having a formal job or working as an urban farmer, fisher, vendor, community kitchen owner, or spaza shop owner increases agency as well. (ibid, p.94)
From this study, community researchers developed visions, among them to destigmatise hunger, to collaborate in dialogues to increase awareness on the right to food and to rethink community kitchens as hubs for change. These food dialogues held the potential to build on the initial momentum and relationships that had been developed through the Agency study into more established ward level food dialogues (Buthelezi and Metelerkamp, 2022).
Best,
Nomonde Buthelezi & Nicole Paganini
Dr. Nicole Paganini