Security, Sovereignty, and Food Justice

This course explores of the capacious concepts social, environmental, and economic justice and their intersection with world food systems. The causes and consequences of global and domestic food and water (in)security anchor the study. The paradox of want amid plenty and barriers to food access will be examined and set the stage for exploration of the “right to food.” We will consider the challenges facing small holder farmers, including land grabs, political instability, insufficient infrastructure, access to markets, and the effects of international trade agreements. We will also study the treatment of workers throughout the food chain and confront the difficult fact that those whose labor puts food on our tables are often unable to put food on their own. Throughout the course, we will attend to the positional dimensions of food justice, examining how race, origin, gender, economic status, and cul inform and complicate food justice projects. Students will assemble, interrogate, refine, and defend personal definitions of food security, food sovereignty, and food justice and devise ways to progressively realize the ideals embedded within their definitions.