Jin-Kyu Jung coauthors “Digital Food Apartheid: The Uneven Food Geographies of Seattle In The Era of Amazon”

Jin-Kyu Jung has published a co-authored paper, “Digital food apartheid: The uneven food geographies of Seattle in the era of Amazon” in Environment and Planning F: Philosophy, Theory, Models, Methods and Practice. The paper puts forward the concept of “digital food apartheid” to articulate differentiation in terms of one’s agency concerning their food that is mediated by, reified through, or materialized from data or digital infrastructure, given the omnipresence of racial capitalism. It examines the digitization of public food assistance in the U.S. in conversation with Black digital geographies, food geographies, and critical GIS, paying particular attention to the US Department of Agriculture’s COVID-19-era Online Grocery Purchase Program (OPP), which gives Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants access to online grocery shopping and delivery.