From the infrastructure of food to food as infrastructure in Brazil’s urban peripheries

Infrastructural debates have examined how unequal, uncertain and fragmented service provision shapes the everyday lives of marginalised citizens, yet have largely overlooked the relations with food. In Brazil’s urban peripheries access to food is mediated by combinations of people as infrastructure, social infrastructures and infrastructures of care. Drawing upon fieldwork in São Paulo and Belo Horizonte, this article makes two contributions. First, it maps what food geographies termed food infrastructures, the material and social infrastructures that shape food practices, foregrounding the role of women’s labour and collective organisation in bridging gaps in food provision and acquisition. Second, it argues that food itself functions as infrastructure—generating connections between people, spaces, and materials that support the reproduction of everyday life. By proposing the notion of food as infrastructure, the article brings food practices into infrastructural debates and offers a framework for investigating food (in)justice in contexts of exclusion.