Elaine Power

PhD (University of Toronto)

MSc (University of Guelph)

BSc (University of Ottawa)

BA (Mount St. Vincent University)

Cross-Appointed to Department of Gender Studies

Affiliated with the Cultural Studies Graduate Program

Undergraduate Courses

HLTH 235 – Food Systems

HLTH 430 – Sociocultural Studies of Food

Graduate Courses

KHS 875 – Qualitative Methods

Research Summary

My research is focused on issues related to poverty, class, food, and health. Drawing on literature from the sociology of food, the sociology of health, the sociology of consumption, the sociology of childhood, and cultural studies, and using qualitative research methods, I explore social, cultural, political and symbolic aspects of food, eating, the body, and health.

Student Theses

Bronwen Williams, The “Epidemic of Obesity” in the Public Media: A Discourse Analysis

Andrea Kirkham, Size doesn’t matter… or does it?

Nike Ashabo, The Spiritual Foundations of the Health Experiences of Low-Income Black Women

Melanie Kurrein, Split in Two: How Divorce Influences Teenagers’ Food Practices

Jessica Diener, Everyone Poops but No One Wants to Talk about It: The Lived Experiences Of Young People With Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Simon Robinson, Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is: Hunger, Cause-Related Marketing & The Politics of Corporate Food Bank Philanthropy

Brad Hiebert, ‘Heroes for the helpless’: How National Print Media Reinforce Settler Dominance through their Portrayal of Food Insecurity in the Canadian Arctic

Khalela Bell, An Autoethnography of Tree Planting in Northern Ontario

Tricia Smith, “I am deliberate and afraid of nothing”: using body mapping as a research tool to explore HIV risk among youth in Soweto, South Africa.

Sarah Carbone, An investigation into Canada’s failure to implement a National School lunch program during WWII and postware reconstruction, 1940-1950.

Maha Malibari, Teen Girls’ perspectives on their current dietary habits and food choices:  a qualitative study in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Madison Koekkoek, “Come and live in my shoes”:  food access and social isolation for people living in poverty in Gananoque, Ontario.

Jennifer Brady, Tracing the Apron for the White Lab Coat: a contemporary history of dietetics in Canada, 1954 to 2016.

Susan Belyea, “no es facil” / It’s not easy:  Neoliberalism, precarity, and food insecurity in Kingston, Ontario and Havana, Cuba.

Rachael Iacoe, Putting Food back into the curriculum:  key informants’ perspectives on implementing a mandatory food literacy component in Ontario secondary school curriculum.

Karina Gerhardt-Strachan, “To recover a sense of the sacred in ourselves and in everything around us”: exploring the place of spirituality in Canadian health promotion

Selected Publications & Editorial Opinions

Parker, B., Brady, J., Power, E., & Belyea, S. (Eds.). (2019). Feminist Food Studies: Intersectional Perspectives. Toronto, ON: Women’s Press.

King, S., Carey, R. S., MacQuarrie, I., Millious, V. N., & Power, E. M. (Eds.). (2019). Messy Eating: Conversations on Animals as Food. New York: Fordham University Press.

Power, E., Belyea, S., & Collins, P. (2019). “It’s not a food issue; it’s an income issue”: using Nutritious Food Basket costing for health equity advocacy. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 110(3), 294-302. doi:10.17269/s41997-019-00185-5

Carbone, S., Power, E., & Holland, M. R. (2018). Canada’s Missed Opportunity to Implement State-funded School Meal Programs in the 1940s. Critical Public Health. DOI: 10.1080/09581596.2018.1524849.

Luppens, L., & Power, E. (2018). “Aboriginal isn’t just about what was before, it’s what’s happening now:” Perspectives of Indigenous peoples on the foods in their contemporary diets. Canadian Food Studies, 5(2), 142-161.

Beagan, B. L., Chapman, G. E., & Power, E. (2017). The visible and invisible occupations of food provisioning in low income families. Journal of Occupational Science, 25(1), 100-111. doi:10.1080/14427591.2017.1338192

Beagan, B., Chapman, G., & Power, E. (2016). Cultural and symbolic capital with and without economic constraint: Food shopping in low-income and high-income Canadian families. Food, Culture & Society, 19(1), 45-70.

Hiebert, B., & Power, E. (2016). Heroes for the helpless: A critical discourse analysis of Canadian national print media’s coverage of the food insecurity crisis in Nunavut. Canadian Food Studies, 3(2), 104-126.

Power, E., Abercrombie, D., St-Germain, A.-A. F., Vanderkooy, P., & Dietitians of Canada. (2016). Prevalence, Severity and Impact of Household Food Insecurity: A Serious Public Health Issue. Dietitians of Canada Background Paper. Dietitians of Canada: Toronto, ON. Available from www.dietitians.ca/Downloads/Public/HFI-Background-DC-FINAL.aspx

Polzer, J., & Power, E. (Eds.). (forthcoming). Neoliberal Governance and Health: Duties, Risks and Vulnerabilities.

Power, E. (forthcoming). Governing the child’s body: The obesity epidemic and mothers’ duties in neoliberal consumer society In J. Polzer & E. Power (Eds.), Neoliberal Governance and Health: Duties, Risks and Vulnerabilities.

Power, E. (forthcoming). Food Banks. In K. Albala (Ed.), Food Issues. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Collins, P. A., Power, E., & Little, M. H. (2014). Municipal Level Responses to Household Food Insecurity in Canada: A Call For Critical, Evaluative Research. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 105(2), e138-e141.

Power, E., Little, M. H., & Collins, P. A. (2014). Should Canadian Health Promoters Support a Food Stamp-style Program to Address Food Insecurity? Health Promotion International. doi: 10.1093/heapro/dau080

Power, E. (2014). Food and poverty in high income countries. In P. B. Thompon & D. M. Kaplan (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics, (pp. 830-838). Springer.http://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007%2F978-94-007-0929-4

Beagan, B. L., Chapman, G. E., Johnson, J., McPhail, D., Power, E., & Vallianatos, H. (2015). Acquired Tastes: Why Families Eat the Way They Do. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press.

Brady, J., Gingras, J., & Power, E. (2012). Still hungry: A feminist perspective on food, foodwork, the body and food studies. In M. Koç, J. Sumner & A. Winson (Eds.), Critical Perspectives in Food Studies (pp. 122-135). Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.

Power, E. M. (2008). Conceptualizing food security for Aboriginal people in Canada. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 99(2), 95-97. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/1974/1224

Power, E., & Dietitians of Canada. (2005). Background paper. Individual and household food insecurity in Canada: Position of Dietitians of Canada. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/1974/1225

Power, E. M. (2005). The unfreedom of being Other: Canadian lone mothers’ experiences of poverty and ‘life on the cheque’. Sociology, 39(4), 643-660. Preprint available at: http://hdl.handle.net/1974/1214

Power, E. (2003). De-centering the text: Exploring the potential for visual methods in the sociology of food. Journal for the Study of Food and Society, 6(2), 9-20. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/1974/1226

Selected Editorial Opinions

Power, E. (2019, 23 May). Sending surplus food to charity is not the way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/sending-surplus-food-to-charity-is-not-the-way-to-reduce-greenhouse-gas-emissions-115685

Power, E. (2016, 9 September). Ontario social assistance doesn’t meet basic human needs. Policy Options Blog.

Power, E. (2016, February). An Effective Basic Income Guarantee would End Food Insecurity. Invited blog post for Upstream.

Power, E. (2015, 30 January). Opinion: Pressure on Professors. The Queens Journal.

Power, E. (2014). Health 101 basics: A community wake-up call, The Kingston Whig-Standard.

Power, E., Riches, G., & Tarasuk, V. (2012, 19 December). Corporate tax breaks are not the answer to hunger in Canada, The Toronto Star.

Power, E. (2012, 27 April). Canadian professor says food banks are ‘sticking plaster on gaping wounds’,BBC Scotland Investigates: Breadline Scotland 

Power, E. (2011, 25 July). It’s time to close Canada’s food banks, The Globe and Mail.