Human Dignity as a Lens and Framing of Food Charity

ABSTRACT This article examines the rise of food charity through the lens of human dignity, arguing that the growing reliance on charitable food provision reflects and reinforces the neoliberal erosion of welfare. Within this context, food insecurity is increasingly addressed not as a structural injustice but as a personal failing, to be managed through conditional, short‐term assistance. Such systems undermine dignity by restricting autonomy, choice, and political voice, while subjecting recipients to surveillance, gratitude, and stigma. We draw on dignity to explore how hunger is experienced under neoliberalism—not just as material deprivation but as a deeply emotional and relational condition. Although moments of dignity can emerge through acts of recognition or resistance within charitable spaces, these are fragile and constrained. Ultimately, the article argues for a reimagining of social support rooted in solidarity and rights, where dignity is central and hunger is understood as a political, not merely charitable, issue, and the positioning of dignity as a transformative framework with potential to reimagine justice across social policy sectors. Greater attention to dignity as a transformative framework has the potential to reimagine justice across social policy sectors.