Feeding the Hungry: Soul Performance of Food and Faith in the Urban Soup Kitchen

Abstract

Providing food for people who need it is more popular and less controversial than other forms of charitable relief. More popular, that is, to the general public, not necessarily to those who are the targets of charitable giving. Food, agreed to be a basic necessity for all, is the medium "least susceptible to abuse." (quoted in Zelizer 127). Cash aid to the poor, on the other hand, has often been unpopular and some have even proposed making it illegal (128).