The Wall Street Journal recently interviewed Estefani Iraheta, a mother of two who requested donated food from her local Salvation Army when the pandemic hit. Every time she goes to pick up the canned food and staples, more people are waiting in line with her, seeking food for their families. As of August 2020, an estimated 12 percent of U.S. households, or roughly 1 in 8 U.S. households, did not have enough food within the last week; for U.S. households with children, nearly 20% stated they did not have enough food the previous week. 

Food insecurity refers to inconsistent access to sufficient, nutritious food that is necessary to live a healthy life. While hunger is a related issue, food insecurity is fundamentally about a lack of household resources. And the COVID-pandemic has worsened U.S. food insecurity by increasing unemployment, raising food prices, and closing schools. 

Schools are a vital institution, not only for learning but also for access to social services, including regular meals. From kindergarten to college, many schools offer a dependable source of community support and reliable access to food. Even before the pandemic, however, food insecurity has been a critical issue for U.S. students. In recent years, researchers have investigated how educational institutions handle this issue.

• Amy Shanafelt, Mary O. Hearst, Qi Wang, Marilyn S. Nanney, 2016. Food insecurity and rural adolescent personal health, home, and academic environments. Journal of School Health 86: 472-480.
• The Urban Institute and Feeding America, 2016. The Impossible Choice: Teens and Food Insecurity in America. 
• Brian Elbel, Kosuke Tamura, Zachary T. McDermott, et al. 2019. Disparities in food access around homes and schools for New York City children. PLoS ONE 14(6).
• Amy Best, 2017. Fast-Food Kids: French Fries, Lunch Lines, and Social Ties. New York: New York University Press.
• Joy Rayanne Piontak, Michael D. Shulman, 2014. Food Insecurity in Rural America. Contexts.

More recently, scholars have focused on the prevalence of food insecurity among college students, who are often viewed as a privileged group. In particular, research has devoted attention to how colleges do, or do not, address food insecurity.

• Katharine M. Broton, and Clare L. Cady, ed. 2020. Food Insecurity on Campus : Action and Intervention. Johns Hopkins University Press.  
• Nicholas Freudenberg, Sara Goldrick-Rab & Janet Poppendieck, 2019. “College students and SNAP: The new face of food insecurity in the United States.” American Journal of Public Health. Dec;109(12):1652-1658.

Food insecurity is only one consequence of a larger societal issue: poverty and precarity in the United States. In 2019, approximately 34 million Americans were living in poverty, or 10% of the U.S. population. It’s important to recognize that poverty is structured not just by income, but by race, gender, citizenship, and other factors. Here are some key sociological resources on the experience of living poverty in the United States.

• Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer, 2015. $2 A Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America. Mariner Books. 
• Barbara Ehrenreich, 2011. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. Picador.
• Matthew Desmond, 2016. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. Penguin Random House.David K. Shipler, 2004. The Working Poor: Invisible in America. Penguin Random House.

For more news coverage on food insecurity during the COVID-19 crisis in the United States, view The New York Times’ recent article and photo essay.

Can your country be a criminal? Until recently, the legal answer has often been no. Today, sociologists answer: it depends. For instance, this past summer, the federal government resumed executing death row inmates, and more recently, officer-involved shootings have drawn attention to how police officers are entrusted with violent force as part of their duty to protect and serve the people. In many circumstances, these killings are defended as legal or legitimate forms of violence. But many other kinds of killing, such as genocide or murder, are not.

Early sociologist Max Weber argued that countries have historically been defined by the power and right to exercise “legitimate violence,” or violence that is normalized and legal. Although they are entrusted to use violence  to protect their citizens from violence, countries routinely use violence against their own citizens.

• Austin Sarat. 2014. Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty. Stanford University Press.
• Dawn L. Rothe. 2020. “Moving Beyond Abstract Typologies? Overview of State and State-Corporate Crime.” Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crime 1(1): 7-15.

Legitimate violence, often carried out by a country’s police forces or military, is typically reserved for those that are marginalized or alienated.  When a nation commits violence against criminals, those who present security risks, or even those whom we fear, it is often accepted  as a “reasonable” use of force.  Some scholars argue that most forms of police violence, in particular, are difficult to recognize as anything but legitimate and necessary for protection. For example, we often presume that police violence is committed against criminals, in an effort to protect innocent citizens.

• Jean-Paul Derriennic. 1972. “Theory and Ideologies of Violence.” Journal of Peace Research 9: 361-374
• Travis Linneman, Tyler Wall, and Edward Green. 2014. “The Walking Dead and Killing State: Zombification and the Normalization of Police Violence.” Theoretical Criminology 18(4): 506-527.
• Siniša Malešević. 2010. The Sociology of War and Violence. Cambridge University Press.

It wasn’t until WWII and the Holocaust that the international community questioned a nation’s right to perpetuate violence against its people. For example, Hitler’s murderous campaign against the Jews and other social outcasts was, in fact legal, as genocide was not yet a crime. A state’s right to legitimate violence has only diminished with the recent development and globalization of human rights.

• Joachim Savelsberg. 2010. Crime and Human Rights: Criminology of Genocide and Atrocities. New York: Sage Publications.

Both police violence and mass violence committed by states against their own populations are beginning to be understood as crimes. Internationally, we have seen this with the creation of the International Criminal Court. Closer to home, we see this with the calls to prosecute police officers who have engaged in police brutality. Yet many forms of violence committed by the state are still perceived as legitimate, despite the fact they involve the same type of violence. For example, intentionally targeting and killing a civilian may be labeled an illegal crime against humanity or the legal result of a capital criminal prosecution.