Food Justice and Narrative Ethics: Reading Stories for Ethical Awareness and Activism

Description

Beth A. Dixon explores how food justice impacts on human lives. Stories and reports in national media feature on the one hand hunger, famine and food scarcity, and on the other, rising rates of morbid obesity and health issues. Other stories—food justice narratives—illustrate how to correct the ethical damage created by the first type of story. They detail the nature of oppression and structural injustice, and show how these conditions constrain choices, truncate moral agency, and limit opportunities to live well. With stories from national media, food and farming memoirs, and scholarly ethnographies, Dixon reveals how different food narratives are constructed, and enable identification of just solutions to issues surrounding food insecurity, farm labor, and the lived experience of obesity. Drawing on Aristotle’s concept of ethical perception, Dixon demonstrates how we can use narratives to enhance our understanding and ethical competence about injustice in relation to food. Food Justice and Narrative Ethics is a must-read for students of food studies, philosophy, and media studies. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Garden Journal: Ordering Seeds Introduction Narrative ethics Master narratives and counterstories Justice and injustice Chapter summaries Autobiography Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard: Meeting Mother Hubbard 1. Ethical Perception Particularity Accuracy Emotional engagement Conclusion Garden Journal: Growing Seeds 2. Developing Narrative Skill The Dreyfus model of skill acquisition Rules Priority of the particulars The philosophical novel Epistemic skills “The Hippopotamus at Dinner” Conclusion Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard: Food Pantry 3. Food Insecurity: Hungry Women Real stories of hunger Moral innocence and the “impure” victim GlobalGiving Feeding the nonprofits Conclusion Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard: Food Bank 4. Rewriting the Call to Charity The food justice lens Case study: A Place at the Table Blaming the poor Case study: The Hunger Project Conclusion Garden Journal: Moving Outdoors 5. Farmworkers: “It is Very Ugly Here” Migration is voluntary Oppression is natural Individual moral agency Case study: Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies Case study: Food Chains Conclusion Garden Journal: Too Much Kale 6. Obesity, Responsibility, and Situated Agency Finding moral fault Responsibility and volitional control Case study: Fat Boy, Thin Man Case study: Fed Up Extending the scope of responsibility Conclusion Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard: Erin 7. Practicing Philosophy The role of stories Who does what with the story? Blame as protest Do something Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard: Patrick Notes References Index