Abstract

Drawing from a qualitative community-based project in Little Burgundy, a predominantly Black Montreal neighbourhood, this thesis applies community-based and critical ethnographic methods to explain a range of diverse food practices by and for racialized people. Given the changing character of its socio-spatial configurations, this neighbourhood and its history are far more com-plex and multilayered than mainstream narratives would suggest. In this thesis, I explain how individuals depicted as food insecure by community food organizations are in fact involved in diverse food practices rooted in an ethic of mutual care and racial justice while sustaining their cultures and traditions. Rather than attempt to offer a complete story of food landscapes, this thesis provides a glimpse of the diverse and innovative ways racialized people enact community food economies through a series of vignettes situated in four ongoing food projects: a community garden, a food bank, an at-home gardening initiative and a Citizen’s market. At these sites, I turn to the theory of racial viscosity to make sense of how processes of racialization create, obscure, and reinforce lines of separation and belonging in the studied sites. Sketching connections be-tween viscosity, mutual care and racial justice, this research study sheds light on how and why racialization is key to the study of everyday food practices.