An Apparatus of (In)Difference: Governing Indigenous Food (In)Security through Healthism in Winnipeg, Manitoba

• Author / Creator

  Daborn, Merissa

• Engaging with the fields of critical Indigenous theory, Indigenous STS (Science, Technology, and Society), and governmentality, An Apparatus of (In)Difference interrogates how Indigenous food insecurity policy reiterates food insecurity as a matter of poor health choices. I delineate how a power/knowledge nexus of health and nutrition informs how the food insecurity of Indigenous people living in Winnipeg is differentially governed through healthism, a governing rationality that disciplines bodies through strategies of self-regulation at the level of the individual. In following Foucauldian governmentality methodologies, this research charts an apparatus of healthism that is constituted by federal, provincial, municipal, not-for-profit intermediaries, and researchers’ rationalities, programs, and technologies that includes but is not limited to: population statistics, anti-obesity frameworks, nutrition and dietary programming, food councils, community food assessments, geographic mappings of food deserts, mirages, and swaps, and after school nutrition education. I situate these empirical facets within three conceptual relationalities – the individual and the body politic (settler agents of governmentality), the expert and the expertise (federal policy makers), and the biocitizen (the disciplined Indigenous subject). By connecting these conceptual relationalities to the empirical context of Winnipeg, I demonstrate how governmentality and healthism operate through white possessive securitization and racialized logics, which ultimately leads to the differential governing of Indigenous health and food security. This research identifies liberal, seemingly altruistic, calls for health promotion and regulation that have disciplinary outcomes for Indigenous populations. As such, this analysis disrupts the racialized logics that limit Indigenous health policy approaches to the reiteration of biocolonial ideals.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Indigenous Studies
  • Indigenous Science
  • Technology
  • and Society
  • Healthism
  • Food Security
  • Governmentality
  • Biocitizenship
  • Whiteness
  • Health Policy
  • Indigenous Health Policy
  • Urban Indigenous Studies
  • Urban Indigenous Policy
  • Critical Indigenous Studies

• Graduation date

  Spring 2021

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-4x3m-jy39

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.