Food is the stuff of life. It is part of our very being as an organism in a metabolic relationship with what lies outside our biological selves. As we are inherently social beings, food is also the stuff of our relatedness to others. This course approaches food and culture from the perspective of an ethics of living. Ethics is a branch of philosophy that asks what is good and evil, right or wrong. Often there are no easy answers to ethical questions, and this demands from us a willingness to question and reflect on our understandings of the world. It also asks us to think about the claims of responsibility we have for ourselves and for others.

This course is designed to develop an awareness of our relationships to others (including other species) with every bite we take. We will be exploring how industrialized agriculture and the food processing industry has changed our relationship to food and how people in alternative food communities are trying to rebuild local food systems in ways that are healthier for themselves and others. We will also be exploring the pleasures of producing, cooking, and sharing food. Eating is one of the most physical pleasures we experience as living beings, but our pleasure in eating is also bound with meanings of deep social and cultural significance in our need for love and social connection.

The learning activities for this course will combine reading and writing with fieldwork experience and hands-on activities with food. Reading, discussion, observation, food production and preparation, and sharing food with others are experiences that you will be asked to “process” through the writing of a food blog to record your reflections on how your relationship to what you eat may be changing through these explorations.

Friday, January 2, 2009

Book Order Update

Please let me know as soon as possible if you have any trouble locating a copy of Raj Patel's Stuffed and Starved through the University Bookstore. The Bookstore has had some problems in getting this from the distributor. If you don't have your copy, by the beginning of February, you might want to order it through Amazon.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)