13 pages., Via online journal., Access to food is a basic pillar of human development. It is therefore unsurprising that it features so centrally on global development agendas and that a robust, interdisciplinary literature seeks to examine its determinants. This study focuses on the relationship between mobile technology and food access. Specifically, we ask whether mobile technology can strengthen the relationship between food access and certain social and political factors such as remittance flows and political participation. We use Afrobarometer surveys and highly disaggregated data on 2G network coverage to estimate a multilevel model testing how increased connectivity measured by mobile technology influences food access. We show that mobile phone use and higher frequency of use are significantly and positively correlated with food access, but we do not find evidence that remittances and political participation levels can explain the mechanisms linking mobile technology and food access. The study highlights that connectivity can play a powerful role in shaping food outcomes even when controlling for commonly identified impediments such as income constraints or physical isolation. These findings suggest that policies aimed at improving food access should devote attention to strengthening both communication and physical infrastructure.
21 pages., via online journal., This article offers a critical rhetorical ecofeminist analysis of the Meatless Monday campaign, a U.S.-based meat reduction initiative focused on public health and the environment. By examining the campaign's online discourse, the study sheds light on vegetarian advocacy defined by an apolitical small-steps strategy and identifies constraints on the campaign's significant empowerment potential. Extending past scholarship on how some vegetarian discourses resist and reproduce meat-eating culture's hegemonic norms of gender, race/ethnicity, class, and human–nonhuman relations, I develop and demonstrate what I call the critique of neoliberal backgrounding as an intersectional ecofeminist heuristic. I conclude that the campaign should address the meaningful consequences that its affirmation of neoliberalism has for its targeted areas of concern and for interconnected societal problems.
