Discipline and Feed: Food Banks, Pastoral Power, and the Medicalisation of Poverty in the UK

Food banks across the UK are offering basic food supplies and a range of support services to people who have been affected by years welfare cuts ongoing COVID-19 health crisis. Despite growing research interest in drivers experiences bank use, their own role constructing managing poverty as social problem has neglected. Adopting Foucauldian approach, this study critically explored how power is exercised subjects formed inside three banks. The localised care for poor shown work through pastoral power, which requires confessions crises obedience an expert regime diagnosis treatment individual condition. By making aid conditional on active engagement with other agencies, volunteers negotiate translate neoliberal discourses personal responsibility citizenship. Findings linked wider critique government, works therapeutic retains disciplinary paternalistic elements at distance.