Old abattoirs and new food politics: Sharing food and eating together at the meat market of Brussels

Abstract

Abstract In 2012 in a formerly abandoned meat market in Brussels, Belgium, an NGO was founded to produce social inclusion programs and transform an under-used urban space into a community hub. In attempting to fulfill its goal, the founders, staff, and volunteers have used surplus unsold market produce that would otherwise have been discarded in order to fuel several programs, by inviting people to take food or to come and share a meal. This article is an ethnographic study of those efforts that rely on food waste to promote community engagement, and considers them as alternative forms of “scrappy collaboration” and commensality. In probing “scrappy collaboration” as a framework for understanding food sharing in a modern European capital, the article investigates the use of food waste to produce social inclusion as well as to provide a means of both subsistence and resistance.