Problematising justice definitions in public food security debates: Towards global and participative food justices

In the current environment of austerity, social justice concerns are increasingly permeating the food security agenda. However, there is a need to clarify what it means to create socially just food systems conceptually and practically. To address this gap, this paper proposes an analytical framework to embed a more complex conceptualisation of justice in food security debates that also serves as a bridging device across competing narratives. This framework is mobilised to analyse the framing process of the UK media, which plays a key role in developing narratives that provide audiences with schemas for interpreting events. Results show the emergence of eleven frames which highlight different solutions to deliver food security. The application of the justice analytical framework evidences the contingent relationship between food security and justice claims and discusses how these food security frames address differently what counts as a matter of justice (including economic, socio-cultural and political dimensions) and who counts as a subject of justice, tackling issues around delimitation of scales and sites of justice. The analysis reveals polarised positions between whether the sites subject to justice should be individuals or structures and uncovers how political and global elements of justice are largely by-passed in food security debates. These conceptualisations of justice and associated policy recommendations neglect the potential for people to participate fully in the conditions and decisions that give rise to particular distributions of goods and bads in the first place; limiting the construction of shared responsibilities to deliver global and participative food justices.