Food, Health and Society: Course readings
This document contains summaries and/or key points of:
Week 1
Lecture 1
Stock, P. et al. (2015)“Food Utopians: Hoping the future of agriculture”. In Food utopias: reimagining citizenship, ethics and community. Oxon:Routledge
Earthscan. Pp 3-13.
Lang, T. and Heasman, M. (2015). Food Wars: The global battle for mouths, minds and markets. Routledge: Oxon. Chapter 1 (pp 1-15).
Lecture 2
Lang, T. Barling, D. & Caraher, M. (2009), Food policy: integrating health, environment and society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, Chapter 1.
Lecture 3
Lang, T. and Heasman, M. (2015). Food Wars: The global battle for mouths, minds and markets. Routledge: Oxon. Chapter 2 (pp 16-58).
Lecture 4
Barber, B. (2013). If Mayors Rules the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities. New Haven: Yale University Press. Chapter 1 (Pp 3-24).
Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (2015): http://www.foodpolicymilano.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Milan-Urban-Food-Policy-Pact-EN.pdf
Tutorial 1
Bacchi, C.L. (2009) Analysing policy: what’s the problem represented to be. Frenchs Forest Pearson. Introduction pp ix-xxii.
Lecture 5
Miklelsen, B. 2011. Images of foodscapes: Introduction to foodscape studies and their application in the study of healthy eating out-of-home
environments. Perspectives on Public Health. 131(5):209-16. https://doi.org/10.1177/1757913911415150
Orru, A.M. 2015. Extracting Urban Food Potential: design-based methods of digital and bodily cartography. Future of Food: Journal on Food, Agriculture
and Society. 3(1): 48-62. http://fofj.org/index.php/journal/article/view/147
Week 2
Lecture 6
Dixon, J. (2011) Diverse food economies, multivariant capitalism, and the community dynamic shaping contemporary food systems. Community
Development Journal 46 No S1, i20–i35 https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsq046
Lecture 7
Massey, D. 2005. For space. Thousand Oaks: SAGE. Chapter 1 Pp 9- 15.
Lecture 8
Morgan, K and Sonnino, R. (2008), Public food and sustainable development: barriers and opportunities, in: K. Morgan & R. Sonnino, The School Food
Revolution, public food and the challenge of sustainable food, London/Washington D.C.: Earthscan, 1-20.
Tutorial 2:
Harris, E. (2010) "Eat local? Constructions of place in alternative food politics." Geography compass 4(4): 355-369. 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2009.00298.x
Lecture 9
Fresco, L. 2015. Splat goes the theory. AEON. Essays. Available: https://aeon.co/essays/is-sustainability-sold-at-supermarkets-or-farmers-
markets?utm_source=hootsuite
DeLind, L. (2011) "Are local food and the local food movement taking us where we want to go? Or are we hitching our wagons to the wrong
stars?." Agriculture and Human Values 28.2: 273-283. doi: 10.1007/s10460-010-9263-0
Week 3
Lecture 10
Wiskerke, J. (2015). Urban Food Systems. In Cities and Agriculture: Developing resilient urban food systems. Pp 1-25. Eds Henk de Zeeuw and Pay Drechsel.
Routledge: Oxon.
Lecture 12
Caraher, M., Furey, S., Is it appropriate to use surplus food to feed people in hunger? Short-term Band-Aid to more deep rooted problems of poverty, 26
January 2017. Food Research Collaboration Policy Brief. http://foodresearch.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Final-Using-food-surplus-
hunger-FRC-briefing-paper-24-01-17-.pdf
Lecture 13
Candel, J. and Pereira, L. 2017. Towards integrated food policy: Main challenges and steps ahead. Environmental Science and Policy. 73: 89-92.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2017.04.010
1
, Week 1
Lecture 1
Stock, P. et al. (2015)“Food Utopians: Hoping the future of agriculture”. In Food utopias: reimagining citizenship, ethics and
community. Oxon:Routledge Earthscan. Pp 3-13.
Food utopias – Hoping the future of agriculture
For many in the developed and wealthy classes of the world, this vision of access to any and all kinds and varieties of food is
the norm. We are in need of new food stories. The ones we’re telling now center too exclusively on ends (e.g.,
caloric output) and silver bullets (e.g., miracle rice). We’re paying dearly for our single-minded pursuit of cheap food:
a dominant narrative in contemporary food and agriculture policy. Our emphasis that food must be cheap leaves a
wake of broken promises. An era of cheap food parallels a society of disposability in which not just off-sized carrots
get tossed but people of certain classes, countries, and ethnicities are deemed disposable. At the same time that the
destructive and hidden world of food is made more visible, we are also growing more familiar with the new (and so
old they look new) ideas of growing food and caring for communities through agriculture including community
gardens and the continued growth of organic and urban agriculture.
Food utopias
These new stories of food tell us that cheapness is not the only way. Nor is food science or food marketing or fast food.
There is no single way to think about food and food futures, so we turn to utopian stories to broaden the number of
places we can look to make sense of so many food stories.
“Utopianism represents the nearest thing we have to a history of cross-disciplinary thought.” The three “faces” of
utopia: literary, utopian practice and utopian social theory. 1. Describes a long and almost universal existence of
utopian stories that both describe and satirize the contemporary age, while envisioning better (or intended to seem
better) ways of living. 2. Utopian practice in the form of intentional communities, communes or ecovillages refer to
“alternative” ways of living that do not adhere to the mainstream (multiple kinds of living, marital, child rearing and
dietary arrangements). 3. Utopian social theory uses both literary utopias and utopian practices to make sense of the
social world and social change. 4. “Utopianism is a philosophy of hope”. Thus our food utopias aim to articulate
philosophies of hopeful food.
“Utopias enable us to explore the structural limits of what is thinkable”. There are different kinds of utopias + we are
moving away from a dominant food narrative dominated by an ideology of production and commodification. Food
utopias, as a framework, operates as a mediating tool. Utopia, as a concept, inspires ambiguity at best and revulsion
at worst. But, rarely, does utopia inspire indifference. Rather than a narrow logic around food, utopias helps us to
loosen the boundaries on whose ideas matter around food. In this space of emotional and intellectual pull or
revulsion, is a starting point (Trojan Horse)l. Through the idea of utopias – proposing/countering/anticipating them –
we might be able to broker or at least begin dialogue around what a just food system might look like. Utopian stories
and intentional communities challenge our day-to-day life of business as usual in often unconventional ways.
Restrictions on child labor started out as fiction, so too did universal healthcare and credit unions. The Swiss are
debating a universal wage that would be paid to every citizen with no strings attached. These might described as real
utopias – things that have existed at some scale that we can adopt. The utopian can become reality.
Food utopias as a tool
A system built upon cheapness leaves us just where we are – in perpetual hunger and crisis. Food utopias are a tool of
dialogue and communication that recognizes problems, but leaves hope and possibility open for discussion. “A tool
becomes a tool in practice.” So food utopias are not prescriptive – there is no one size fits all way of “using” food
utopias to get to some end rather than another.
Food utopias help us critique (and decenter) conventional narratives, document experiments whereby food is being
done differently, and emphasize that the practice of food or doing food differently is an often messy and always
indeterminate process.
.
Critique
Food utopias helps us continue to critique. Food utopias help us open up an ontological space to think in terms of
alternatives. Food utopias helps us realize that like those who grow food, not everything planted bears fruit (we have to
get used to failure).
Experimentation
The “aim” of experimentation “is not about winning or losing or about producing better or more accurate representation.
Instead, it is about changing engagements and making new configurations of people and things possible” not so much
about making “successes” but about making difference.
Process
The idea of process recognizes that not all of these experiments will yield success. An emphasis on process recognizes that
new ideas and experiments coming from the margins of society need space to incubate.
2
, Lang, T. and Heasman, M. (2015). Food Wars: The global battle for mouths, minds and markets. Routledge: Oxon. Chapter 1
(pp 1-15).
Humanity has reached a critical juncture in its relationship to food supply and food policy, and both public and corporate
policies are failing to adequately grasp the enormity of the challenge, let alone how to implement much needed
change. Therefore, food policy is in crisis, particularly over health and environment. Both need to be addressed if
society is to be well served. Food policy needs to provide solutions to the worldwide burdens of diet-related ill
health, food-related environment damage and the social inequalities associated with these. Nowadays, food policy is
in a phase called ‘Food Wars’; competing and sometimes contradictory analyses and solutions, and with different
actors and vested interests putting forwards divergent food policy agendas. These activities together represent a
critical struggle over the future of food and the shaping of minds, markets and mouths. This will force us to change
our relationship with what and how we eat an how the world’s food us grown, processed and sold.
Food is an intimate part of people’s daily lives; a biological necessity but also a way to interact with friends, family, work,
ourselves etc. Associated with pleasure, pain, seduction, power, caring and sharing. It is hard to imagine there is a
global food system, stretching from the local corner store to the giant food conglomerate and from the consumer to
business interactions. This book brings attention to the complexity of the way food is processed and produced, the
impact of food on the environment and the social dimension of Food Wars. Social factors such as class, gender and
culture shape and are influenced by the material and biological realities of food systems.
Health – the relationship between diet, disease, nutrition and public health
Business – the way food is produced and handled, from farm inputs to consumption
Consumer culture – how, why and where people consume food
Society – how food is framed by values, norms, roles and social divisions
The environment – the use and misuse of land, sea and other natural resources when producing food
Food governance – how the food economy is regulated and how food policy choices are made and implemented
Why Food Wars?
Despite tens of thousands of food products being on hypermarket shelves, the production methods that delivered
them have reduced the quality and nutritional value of some foodstuffs (such as loss of vitamins). Worldwide there
are around 0.9 billion hungry, 1.4 billion overweight (of whom 500 million obese) and 2 billion mal-nourished.
Food culture is divided dichotomies over/underconsumption, over/underproduction, over/underavailability,
intensification vs. extensiviation, un/sustainable food systems, hi tech vs. traditional etc. etc.
Much of this book is our attempt to resolve the complex battles over what the ‘food policy’ problem really is and
what to do about it.
Lecture 2
Lang, T. Barling, D. & Caraher, M. (2009), Food policy: integrating health, environment and society, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, Chapter 1.
A more sustainable food system is urgently needed. Focus
tends to be on the developed countries, as food policy
tends to be shaped around rich world interests. This
book explores the diversity of tensions, not to
champion only one over the other. But also focusses
more on developed countries as the problem, as they
drive the current unsustainable food systems.
The food system is under stress. New thinking is emerging and
must do so. The world of food is populated by people,
organizations and interests all doing things ( these
processes not just happen).
Core problems in food policy - governance - supply chain -
social justice - poverty
Some cross-cutting themes
Defining the remit of food policy
Historically, food policy tended to veer between
concerns for agriculture (primary production),
nutritional aspects of human health (consumption) and trade (international economics). A new focus on food policy
is required this faces complexity as to how food should be, and is, grown, processed, distributed and consumed. A
food policy framework that is ‘fit to purpose’ needs to be as sensitive to planetary and ecological demands as to
social and human demands.
The complexity of the health-environment-society interface
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