Food Justice and Narrative Ethics: Reading Stories for Ethical Awareness and Activism (Criminal Practice Series)

"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."--Bloomsbury Publishing Cover 1 Half-title 3 Title 5 Copyright 6 Contents 9 Acknowledgments 11 Garden Journal: Ordering Seeds 12 Introduction 13 Narrative ethics 12 Master narratives and counterstories 15 Justice and injustice 18 Chapter summaries 24 Autobiography 26 Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard: Meeting Mother Hubbard 29 1. Ethical Perception 33 Particularity 37 Accuracy 41 Emotional engagement 44 Conclusion 49 Garden Journal: Growing Seeds 51 2. Developing Narrative Skill 53 The Dreyfus model of skill acquisition 55 Rules 56 Priority of the particulars 58 The philosophical novel 62 Epistemic skills 64 “The Hippopotamus at Dinner” 67 Conclusion 68 Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard: Food Pantry 69 3. Food Insecurity: Hungry Women 73 Real stories of hunger 74 Moral innocence and the “impure” victim 78 GlobalGiving 80 Feeding the nonprofits 83 Conclusion 86 Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard: Food Bank 87 4. Rewriting the Call to Charity 89 The food justice lens 90 Case study: A Place at the Table 92 Blaming the poor 94 Case study: The Hunger Project 96 Conclusion 100 Garden Journal: Moving Outdoors 102 5. Farmworkers: “It is Very Ugly Here” 105 Migration is voluntary 106 Oppression is natural 107 Individual moral agency 110 Case study: Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies 111 Case study: Food Chains 117 Conclusion 120 Garden Journal: Too Much Kale 121 6. Obesity, Responsibility, and Situated Agency 125 Finding moral fault 126 Responsibility and volitional control 128 Case study: Fat Boy, Thin Man 130 Case study: Fed Up 135 Extending the scope of responsibility 138 Conclusion 140 Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard: Erin 141 7. Practicing Philosophy 145 The role of stories 145 Who does what with the story? 153 Blame as protest 154 Do something 157 Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard: Patrick 159 Notes 163 References 175 Index 185