Welcome to Week 2!

Hello and welcome to week 2. This week we will be exploring ethical and sustainability considerations related to the food system.

Eating is undeniably an ethical act, as are all choices associated with it. By adopting sustainable food practices in our everyday life, each one of us can promote social justice and ethical food systems.

Foucault (1994) states that the self is not given to us and that to become ethical subjects, we have to constitute ourselves as ethical beings, but the constitution of the ethical self is not self-centred action, instead it is about creating a bridge in order to relate to others.

Foucault conceptualized a subjective view on the matter of ethics, underlying the role of both individualistic and collective ethical practices of food consumption as agency tools to produce transformation in their local contexts.

Over the course of week 2, we will be discussing Ethics and Sustainability considerations in relation to food production, consumerism and supply. We’ll raise attention to the main challenges and solutions within the explored issues, and investigate their value in the implementation of a more just and sustainable food system.

Moreover, we’ll learn about the consequences of the industrial food system (farm-to-plate issues, local vs. global, animal welfare), food movements, the concept of food waste and food recovery practices. We’ll consider the relationships between inequality, poverty, food insecurity and food production.

Let’s get started!