PHIL 3660 - Seminar: Food Ethics

Crosslisted With ENV 3660
FDR: Humanities Distribution (HU)
Credits: 3

Throughout our daily lives we make decisions and take actions that reflect certain values and principles. The study of ethics often serves to evaluate these values and principles in the context of how we should act and live. As a subset of ethics, food ethics is no different. Our relationship to food, what and how we eat, likewise reflects ethical values and principles. For example, what kind of values are implied in eating locally sourced food or abstaining from meat consumption? In this class we will explore and attempt to understand the values implicit in our food choices. In order to do so, we will examine these choices within the social and historical contexts in which they take place. As such, topics will include not only various ways of eating, like veganism or locavorism, but also analyses of food systems and production, including issues like food justice and food sovereignty, as well as how these issues intersect with global climate change. By the end of the semester, students will be able to explain not only what values are implied in our food choices, but how these choices play a role within a broader historical and social context. In doing so, this class lays the foundation for effective and responsible civic engagement through our food choices.