(3.) reports/papers that report on food justice work
Foodchain Workers Alliance
- key point: People working in food sectors are a significant part of
the world's labor supply -- and one of the worst treated (often exempt
from labor laws, for example). Working together, workers are improving
their working conditions, and there are a number of ways the general
public can help support and participate in these efforts.
Related to this project, there's a great talk and video trailer for a book on food chain work, called "Behind the Kitchen Door" by Saru Jayaraman.
Bringing Good Food to Others
- key point: People doing "good food" work are often motivated to try to
"help" other people that they think need their help. Especially in
volunteer work and student service learning, this risks reproducing and
acting on assumptions that people who appear to "need help" are making
bad decisions or don't know enough about food -- rather than recognizing
that people have different circumstances and goals, and that the role
of food justice advocates is not tell everyone they should be making
middle class (white) food decisions, but rather to work toward more
equality in food systems.
Avoiding the Local Trap
- key point: being "local" doesn't necessarily mean food is produced in
better or fairer ways, so if we're promoting local food, we should be
careful not to just be promoting a symbolic fix for the problems facing
the food system
Perceptions of the U.S. Food System: What and How Americans Think about their Food
- key point: when faced with the systemic problems in the American food system, most people surveyed retreat into their own practices
(buying/eating better food / having a garden), rather than being
interested in the systemic changes that they could help make (for
example in policy, regulation, agriculture, race relations)
(4 reports included above:
1. “Not
While I’m Eating: how and why Americans don’t think about food
systems,”
Cultural Logic, June 2005.
The purpose of this report is to help us understand why and how
Americans remain blind to the real processes of food production and
distribution—despite the central role of food in American life. Cultural
Logic identified several key patterns of reasoning that make it hard
for Americans to think about where their food comes from. These include
the dominance of “little-picture” understandings of food, emotional
associations that discourage critical thinking about the sources of
food, and understandings of food systems in terms of generic ideas about
modernization.
2. “All Trees and No Forest: How advocacy paradigms obscure public
understanding of the food system,” Cultural Logic, July 2005.
This report is based on interviews with food advocates to discern how
they think about the food system. Cultural Logic’s assessment is that
while it would be very helpful if members of the public had a conceptual
picture of the food supply system as a whole – including its
environmental, economic and ethical dimensions – advocates’
communications are not likely to help them acquire one. Advocates tend
to focus on self-contained “paradigms” that can obscure the larger
picture, and may not even relate closely to food.
Cultural Logic concludes that without a conceptual grasp of food
systems, members of the public are likely to misinterpret or ignore many
communications from advocates.
3. “Digesting Public Opinion: A meta-analysis of attitudes toward food,
health, and farms,”
Public Knowledge, July 2005.
This is a review and analysis of relevant, publicly available opinion
research conducted in the United States within the past five years. The
review is organized into three sections: perceptions of the relationship
between food and health; understandings of food processing and quality
issues; and views of farm-specific topics.
Media Content Analysis
As the summaries above suggest, most Americans do not think much or at
all about their food being part of, or coming from, a system. Often,
people get their information from the news media. To identify how food
systems are presented to the public by the news media, Cultural Logic
reviewed more than a hundred newspaper articles printed between January
1, 2004 and the present. Articles were selected based on keyword
searches that focused on aspects of the food system other than eating.
This analysis asked the questions: in what ways would consumers of these
articles come away better educated about the food system, and in what
ways might the coverage actually reinforce some of their erroneous
understandings?
4. “Harmful and Productive Patterns in Newspaper Representations of Food
Systems,”
Cultural Logic, August 2005.
This is a content analysis of coverage of the food system in a range of
national newspapers.
Emerging from this analysis were several findings, including: many news
stories play on traditional images of farming and rural America that
work against advocates’ goals, and news stories often reinforce scary or
dehumanized aspects of the food system that we associate with an
inevitable modernization.)
Two papers on practicing food justice (plus a third more recent paper: Solidarity, space, and race: toward geographies of agrifood justice, 2016, Rachel Slocum, Kirsten Valentine Cadieux, and Renata Blumberg, Spatial Justice 9.)
- What does it mean to do food justice? By Kirsten Valentine Cadieux and Rachel Slocum. Pp 1-26. PDF
- Notes on the practice of food justice in the U.S.: understanding and confronting trauma and inequity. By Rachel Slocum and Kirsten Valentine Cadieux. Pp 27-52. PDF
The 2016 special issue of Justice Spatiale / Spatial Justice is also about Food Justice and Agriculture.
- key point: People working in food sectors are a significant part of
the world's labor supply -- and one of the worst treated (often exempt
from labor laws, for example). Working together, workers are improving
their working conditions, and there are a number of ways the general
public can help support and participate in these efforts.
Related to this project, there's a great talk and video trailer for a book on food chain work, called "Behind the Kitchen Door" by Saru Jayaraman.
- key point: People doing "good food" work are often motivated to try to
"help" other people that they think need their help. Especially in
volunteer work and student service learning, this risks reproducing and
acting on assumptions that people who appear to "need help" are making
bad decisions or don't know enough about food -- rather than recognizing
that people have different circumstances and goals, and that the role
of food justice advocates is not tell everyone they should be making
middle class (white) food decisions, but rather to work toward more
equality in food systems.
Avoiding the Local Trap
- key point: being "local" doesn't necessarily mean food is produced in
better or fairer ways, so if we're promoting local food, we should be
careful not to just be promoting a symbolic fix for the problems facing
the food system
Perceptions of the U.S. Food System: What and How Americans Think about their Food
- key point: when faced with the systemic problems in the American food system, most people surveyed retreat into their own practices
(buying/eating better food / having a garden), rather than being
interested in the systemic changes that they could help make (for
example in policy, regulation, agriculture, race relations)
(4 reports included above:
1. “Not
While I’m Eating: how and why Americans don’t think about food
systems,”
Cultural Logic, June 2005.
The purpose of this report is to help us understand why and how
Americans remain blind to the real processes of food production and
distribution—despite the central role of food in American life. Cultural
Logic identified several key patterns of reasoning that make it hard
for Americans to think about where their food comes from. These include
the dominance of “little-picture” understandings of food, emotional
associations that discourage critical thinking about the sources of
food, and understandings of food systems in terms of generic ideas about
modernization.
2. “All Trees and No Forest: How advocacy paradigms obscure public
understanding of the food system,” Cultural Logic, July 2005.
This report is based on interviews with food advocates to discern how
they think about the food system. Cultural Logic’s assessment is that
while it would be very helpful if members of the public had a conceptual
picture of the food supply system as a whole – including its
environmental, economic and ethical dimensions – advocates’
communications are not likely to help them acquire one. Advocates tend
to focus on self-contained “paradigms” that can obscure the larger
picture, and may not even relate closely to food.
Cultural Logic concludes that without a conceptual grasp of food
systems, members of the public are likely to misinterpret or ignore many
communications from advocates.
3. “Digesting Public Opinion: A meta-analysis of attitudes toward food,
health, and farms,”
Public Knowledge, July 2005.
This is a review and analysis of relevant, publicly available opinion
research conducted in the United States within the past five years. The
review is organized into three sections: perceptions of the relationship
between food and health; understandings of food processing and quality
issues; and views of farm-specific topics.
Media Content Analysis
As the summaries above suggest, most Americans do not think much or at
all about their food being part of, or coming from, a system. Often,
people get their information from the news media. To identify how food
systems are presented to the public by the news media, Cultural Logic
reviewed more than a hundred newspaper articles printed between January
1, 2004 and the present. Articles were selected based on keyword
searches that focused on aspects of the food system other than eating.
This analysis asked the questions: in what ways would consumers of these
articles come away better educated about the food system, and in what
ways might the coverage actually reinforce some of their erroneous
understandings?
4. “Harmful and Productive Patterns in Newspaper Representations of Food
Systems,”
Cultural Logic, August 2005.
This is a content analysis of coverage of the food system in a range of
national newspapers.
Emerging from this analysis were several findings, including: many news
stories play on traditional images of farming and rural America that
work against advocates’ goals, and news stories often reinforce scary or
dehumanized aspects of the food system that we associate with an
inevitable modernization.)
Two papers on practicing food justice (plus a third more recent paper: Solidarity, space, and race: toward geographies of agrifood justice, 2016, Rachel Slocum, Kirsten Valentine Cadieux, and Renata Blumberg, Spatial Justice 9.)
- What does it mean to do food justice? By Kirsten Valentine Cadieux and Rachel Slocum. Pp 1-26. PDF
- Notes on the practice of food justice in the U.S.: understanding and confronting trauma and inequity. By Rachel Slocum and Kirsten Valentine Cadieux. Pp 27-52. PDF
The 2016 special issue of Justice Spatiale / Spatial Justice is also about Food Justice and Agriculture.
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