Great Issues in Social Science

HSP 15
CRN
Mondays & Wednesdays 2:10 – 4:00pm
Dr. Trisha Franzen

Preliminary Syllabus
FOOD & JUSTICE: How we come to eat what we do.

Chocolate and corn, sugar and rice, our foods have histories and politics that they bring with them to our tables. From famines to farm bills, the slow food movement to Community Supported Agriculture, “food fights” are increasingly center stage in our private and public lives. This course will introduce students to global and local aspects of some of these debates. We will examine theories from Sen’s thesis on famines and democracies to Pollum’s critiques of the new corporate organic food industry, analyze U.S. and global food policies and practices, and study efforts for fair food. Among the assignments will be food ethnographies, country studies and work with local grassroots efforts. Along with food and farm field trips, we will cook and eat.

Class outline:

1. History of foods

2. Food and Politics
a. Food and Democracy
b. Post-World War II Growth of U.S. Agriculture
c. U.S. Farm Bills
d. Global Food Movements

3. Resistance and Reactions
a. Fair Food: Farm workers and food workers
b. Organic and sustainable agriculture
c. Local Food and Slow Food

4. Local grassroots concerns

Preliminary reading/book list:
Imhoff, Dan. Foodfight : the citizen's guide to a food and farm bill. Healdsburg,
Calif.: Watershed Media ; Berkeley : Distributed by University of
California Press, 2007.
Millstone, Erik and Tim Lang. The Penquin Atlas of Food. New York: Penquin
Books, 2003
Pollum, Michael. The omnivore's dilemma : a natural history of four meals.
New York: Penquin Press, 2006.
Sen, Amartya Kumar. Development As Freedom. New York : Knopf, 1999
Shiva, Vandana, ed.. Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed. Cambridge,
MA: South End Press, 2007
____________. Stolen harvest : the hijacking of the global food supply.
Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000

Documentaries
Our Daily Bread (2006) New York. Icarus Films.
Science for Survival. (1995) Oley, PA : Bullfrog Films.