The Routledge Handbook of Food Ethics

Mary Rawlinson, Caleb Ward

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317595496
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

While the history of philosophy has traditionally given scant attention to food and the ethics of eating, in the last few decades the subject of food ethics has emerged as a major topic, encompassing a wide array of issues, including labor justice, public health, social inequity, animal rights and environmental ethics. This handbook provides a much needed philosophical analysis of the ethical implications of the need to eat and the role that food plays in social, cultural and political life. Unlike other books on the topic, this text integrates traditional approaches to the subject with cutting edge research in order to set a new agenda for philosophical discussions of food ethics.

The Routledge Handbook of Food Ethics is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over 35 chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into 7 parts:

• 
  
  

• the phenomenology of food
• gender and food
• food and cultural diversity
• liberty, choice and food policy
• food and the environment
• farming and eating other animals
• food justice

Essential reading for students and researchers in food ethics, it is also an invaluable resource for those in related disciplines such as environmental ethics and bioethics.

Part I

The phenomenology of food

1
What is food?

Networks, not commodities

Ileana F. Szymanski

This study aims at providing an alternative avenue for our critical evaluation of moral actions with respect to food. It is based on a metaphysical account of food that takes it to be not a commodity but, rather, an active and multi-directional network.

Food is present in many aspects of our lives. Perhaps the first thing that comes to mind when we try to describe food is that it is what sustains us physically to go about our activities. Beyond this role, food is also in many ways a topic of national and international political debate. It is the lifeline of restaurants, chefs, waiters, food critics, farmers, supermarkets, and other food outlets, as well as that of cooking schools, food scientists, institutes of agricultural policy, many health institutions, and health professionals ranging from physicians and nutritionists to dieticians and counselors. Food is also a stronghold of practices that reaffirm and showcase the identities of specific cultures, religions, ethnicities, and other groups. It gives power to those who can prepare it skillfully; it also gives power to those who eat it or refuse to do so for a variety of reasons, such as political protesting, revenge, health, and abstinence. It is the subject of advertisements, films, television shows, photographs, paintings, and other media; it is an object of private and public trade and consumption. Food can be a lifeline, or a road to debt, illness, poverty, and hunger. It can be divisive of families and friendships; it can be the foothold of exploitation, extortion, and oppression of countless human and animal lives, or it can be their redemption.

The quasi-omnipresence of food in people’s lives would have us believe that its paramount role is reinforced by a strong account of what food is, i.e., a strong metaphysics of food. However, this is not the case even though it seems that it should be. A generally accepted account of food is that it is what people eat. There are at least three significant problems with this account. The first is its centeredness on humans; the second is its emphasis on food as a thing, i.e., as radically separate and different from the person who eats it; the third (a consequence of the second) is its emphasis on food as food items, thus preventing a clear understanding of food beyond its role in feeding.

It is possible to think that the term “food” is human-centered because there is another term to describe animal food, namely, “feed.” While this is true in many cases (e.g., when we speak of cattle feed and chicken feed, etc.) it is not always the case: the terms “dog food” and “cat food” are two salient examples. Perhaps we are comfortable with the category “dog food” (or any other type of pet food) and not “cattle food” because we ascribe human-like qualities to companion animals. Or perhaps it is because those companion animals are kept mostly in a human home, and, therefore, we may be inclined to think that their eating is vastly different from that of other animals, many of whom humans (and our pets) also eat. There is, thus, a gradation of species (strongly influenced by their domestication and our particular appreciation of them) implicated in our understanding of food that can be used to justify our turning a blind eye to the suffering of many animals raised for consumption.¹

When food is viewed as a thing, i.e., a commodity, it becomes confusing to claim that at the same time, as it is commonly said, “we are what we eat.” Personal identity, indeed, is not reducible to things such as the items we consume; nevertheless, our identity is greatly affected by the processes that facilitate our eating what we eat (as well as when, where, how, and at what cost), and by the people, institutions, animals, products, and living conditions that enact, interrupt, alter, diversify, or stop those processes. The concept of food exceeds the limits of a commodity. The account of food as a commodity, while not patently false (we do indeed buy and sell food), is nevertheless reductive of what food is, because, on its own, it is unable to explain why food, beyond the necessity of feeding our physical bodies, is central in our lives and our development.

Underlying the above-mentioned problems is a metaphysical architecture that categorizes eater and eaten as separate and mostly unrelated entities: one is a person, the other a thing; one is rational, the other is not; one is special and unique, the other is repeatable and easily substituted by another of its kind. The only link between these entities is the activity of eating (and, perhaps, the preparation towards eating), which is impermanent, and not always significant for the subjects involved. In my view, this metaphysics does not address the richness of the relationships that join eater and eaten and, most importantly, it ignores that the eaten is not primarily a thing. It is rather an active and multi-directional network of forces, events, institutions, etc. It also ignores the relationships that, while being about food, do not always or primarily involve the act of eating.

In his article “Food and Memory,” Jon D. Holtzman (2006: 364) tells us, “food – like the family, gender, or religion – must be understood as a cultural construct in which categories rooted in Euro-American experience may prove inadequate.” These categories seem to be those responding to a binary logic of domination that finds its home in a substance-based metaphysics, where there is a sharp divide amongst entities based on the properties of their substance (person/thing, man/woman, native/foreign, culture/nature, etc.). The tradition of this kind of metaphysics is long and tortuous, and it has been challenged many a time. For example, in his work “Convivialism: A Philosophical Manifesto,” Raymond Boisvert (2010) proposes a theoretical framework for reinterpreting Western philosophy (particularly modern metaphysics)² through the use of the preposition “with.” His account is based on William James and Michel Serres, who propose a “rearranging” of philosophy and the categories it uses to explain the world through this very focus. Boisvert believes that in the area of metaphysics, if philosophy were to include the use of the particle “with” in its analyses of reality (that is to say, if it were to focus on the connections between entities as opposed to their separateness and autonomy), the examination of existence would move from being dominated by the category of autonomy into the category of convivialism, i.e., “accepting an orientation built around the slogan ‘to be is to always be with’ ” (2010: 60).

This approach to convivialism fuels a metaphysical analysis sharply focused on food, and a re-evaluation of specific categories that we use to address issues surrounding this topic. In I Eat, Therefore I Think: Food and Philosophy, Boisvert (2014) uses a metaphysical approach to reconsider the notion of “para-site”: “It literally means the one who eats [sitos] next to [para] another.” A “parasite” could then be considered a “tablemate,” a “co-eater,” even a “companion” (2014: 45). The nature of the parasite is, thus, to be with others – this is what its being is. It can be adopted as a “prototypical metaphysical figure” (2014: 50) that shows us that all beings are, at their very core, relational. When we allow for the intromission of another in our lives, there is potential for harmony: “A dinner table with no new guests is a safe place. It is also the place for redundancy and stagnation. The most vibrant system is hospitable to parasites” (2014: 51).

Boisvert’s original idea about metaphysics is highlighted by Lisa Heldke in her article “An Alternative Ontology of Food: Beyond Meataphysics” (2012). Based on the work of Boisvert and Kelly Oliver, Heldke suggests, “we root our ethical decisions about our food in the tangle of relationships that, together, bring foodstuffs into existence” (2012: 79). She develops the metaphor of a conceptual barn where many different entities live under the same roof based on multiple relationships. The conceptual barn highlights that the decisions we make about what to eat (these being grounded on considerations beyond the biological categories in which we place different kinds of food, e.g., animal/not animal) are interconnected: “all the things we eat are the products of multiple relationships” (2012: 81).

In Heldke’s view, a metaphysics based on relationships works particularly well with food:

[T]o be food is to be (defined as) something that can be eaten by something else, and eating is, of course, a relationship. But the relational character of food extends far beyond the stage at which it is actually consumed. To become food – to be rendered edible, palatable, delicious – means that a living thing has been part of scores of relationships, both natural and cultural: with the soil in which a plant is grown and the sun and rain that enables its growth; with the factory workers who process a raw material … with the heat and the metal pan that turn an ingredient into a “dish” in someone’s home.

(2012: 82)

These relationships form the basis of Heldke’s alternative ethical approach to food issues: “When it comes to making moral decisions about whether or not to purchase and eat some particular food, all of these ‘withs’ are (at least potentially) relevant, and all are operating in relation to each other” (2012: 84). The relationships that she considers are not only amongst eaters, but also amongst eaters and the food they eat, and those people, institutions, parts of environment, etc., that make that food possible. In “Food Politics, Political Food” (1992), Heldke focuses on the self as relational to draw attention to our connections with food. She develops an ontology of the self that she calls the “Coresponsible Option” (1992: 311). This ontology of the self includes awareness of the relationships that humans form not only with other humans “but also with other animals, plants, soil, air, and water” (1992: 314).

In Heldke’s Coresponsible Option theory it is emphasized that regardless of the challenges that accompany the relationships with humans, non-human animals, and the environment (e.g., their asymmetry, the fact that it may make us uncomfortable to know that we are complicit in the suffering of others, etc.) it is clear that being a part of those relationships is not a matter of choice: “it is not a matter of deciding to become involved with others’ lives, but of recognizing the way in which I am inevitably a part of them – and of understanding how their problems are also my own” (1992: 319). According to Heldke, “[t]he interrelations in which food involves us provide powerful examples of the fact that our relations to others are not optional” (1992: 320). The point is underscored once more in her conclusion:

a food-focused coresponsible model for action challenges me to act in ways that will illuminate rather than mystify my relationality, that will highlight the many ways in which those relations involve food, and that will work toward the elimination of the pathological asymmetry that characterizes many of those relations.

(1992: 322)

Heldke’s Coresponsible Option is very convincing. She is able to illuminate our inextricable link to others and to food. Boisvert’s work goes in tandem with this and provides further support to the idea that it is not only not optional to “be with” others but, also, being with others is a source of vitality and harmony. Much like these two projects, my proposal underscores a connection between metaphysics, ethics, and politics. There are, however, two key aspects that differentiate my view.

First, I am focusing on the metaphysics of food as opposed to making a larger metaphysical claim about other aspects of reality that can also be seen as relational. Second, I bring food and not the eater or even the activity of eating into the center of my discussion. My claim is that food can be understood in two ways: food items are tokens of a food insofar as it is a larger network of relationships (perhaps akin to Heldke’s “conceptual barn”). Conceived in this theoretical framework, food includes acts of not eating, both as the rejection of food and as actions existing outside of the sphere of ingestion or digestion (e.g., cultural heritage preservation); national and international trading policies; animal husbandry methodologies; the ethical treatment of animals, farm workers, and their surrounding communities; the environmental impact of growing certain kinds of foods using specific agricultural technologies; practices of disposing of food items, etc. Conceiving of food as having two related meanings offers clarity in that (a) food is sometimes a commodity and, at the same time, a marker of personal identity of the human eater; (b) the same process of carving our personal identities can occur when food items are not present (even if these are seen as more than just commodities); and (c) this provides yet another avenue for moral agents to consider the relationships of which they are already a part, and to which they need to offer an ethical response. In the case of Heldke, the ethical responses that she is looking to examine are those that answer the question, “How are we to eat?” (2012: 69). I wish to offer an approach that helps answer those questions and others, such as, who do I become when I eat in such-and-such way? What vision of the world do I perpetuate because of my actions? What use do I make of the democratic means available to me to create a vision of the world where my thoughts and actions cohere?

It may be surprising that I have chosen to conceive of food using the trope of an active, multi-directional network. I do not mean to be clever or to overcomplicate things. I rather see the need to create a new term to express my ideas. Much like Judith Butler,

[i]t’s not that I’m in favor of difficulty for difficulty’s sake; it’s that I think there is a lot in ordinary language and in received grammar that constrains our thinking … and that I’m not sure we’re going to be able to struggle effectively against those constraints or work within them in a productive way unless we see the ways in which grammar is both producing and constraining our sense of what the world is.

(2004: 327–328)

When privilege allows us to think about food as a commodity, then moral responsibility is eschewed; suffering ceases to be palpable; injustice seems illusory. The language of commoditization allows us to depersonalize our relationship to food; it paints a landscape where food items are static, replaceable, and the product of some process of mechanized activity that we imagine to be aseptic, regulated, and scientific. Our actions with respect to food (how we grow it, buy it, dispose of it, eat it, ban it, promote it, etc.), thus, are many times the result of an uncritical and indifferent thought process.

With the advent of information technologies and the relative abundance (compared to the past forty years or so) of books, academic and popular articles, films, undercover video footage, television shows, pamphlets, etc., that inform consumers about the physical, ethical, and political dangers that ensue in the status quo of food in the world, it is astonishing that a change towards a more responsible way of interacting with food has not been adopted more decisively by consumers. It thus seems that abundant information about the effects of our decisions is not the solution for change towards the better. The types of media used to disseminate the information in question, and the frequency of dissemination, also do not seem to be the problem.

When food is seen exclusively as a commodity, moral obligations towards the different parts of the food system are, at best, relegated to being optional and, at worst, not even a part of the landscape of our interactions. This is plain when our thoughts about food and our behavior towards it are not coherently connected. Consider the following: (1) Loving animals and wishing to protect them, some people experience feelings of compassion when confronted with information about animal abuse; however, this information does not prevent them from eating meat from animals farmed in CAFOs, whose lives are the very expression of the suffering these people perceive as abominable; (2) Advocating verbally for the fundamental dignity of people does not seem to prevent some from purchasing products from companies with documented records of poor working conditions; (3) Claims expressing concern about personal health do not seem to illuminate how people’s diets (usually based on aesthetic preferences rather than nutritional ones) connect them to unnecessary health risks that increase taxation and debt in their community, and how those same choices are examples of selfish and careless life practices.

When a moral agent faces conflicts such as the ones mentioned above, it is evident that thoughts and actions about food do not always dovetail. The reason for this is that those actions are strongly influenced by an understanding of food as a commodity, which does not address, but rather reduces, the richness of what food is. In highlighting a much richer understanding of food (namely, food conceived as an active, multi-directional network), we open alternative avenues of critical examination to those willing to change their relationship to food in a more responsible way. Also, awareness about the responsibilities that already exist in our relationship with food is underscored, as is the process of reciprocal shaping that exists between food and those who engage with it in a variety of ways.

I conceive of a network as a confluence of several “points,” each of which can be an event, a person, a trend, a community, an institution, a practice, a memory, an artifact, a story, a commodity, a space, a living being, etc. The points have a relationship to each other, although not al...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• The phenomenology of food
• What is Food? Networks, not commodities
• Interactions Between Self, Embodied Identities, and Food Considering race, class, and gender
• Metaphoric Determinants of Food and Identity
• Food and Technology
• The Ethics of Eating as a Human Organism
• Gender and food
• Women's Work Ethics, home cooking, and the sexual politics of food
• Meat and the Crisis of Masculinity
• Understanding Anorexia at the Crossroads of Phenomenology and Feminism
• Food and cultural diversity
• The Challenges of Dietary Pluralism*
• Food Security at Risk A matter of dignity and self-respect*
• Indigenous Peoples, Food, and the Environment in Northeast India
• Liberty, choice, and food policy
• Food Labeling and Free Speech
• Food Ethics in an Intergenerational Perspective
• Health Labeling
• The Governance of Food Institutions and policies
• Food at the Nexus of Bioethics and Biopolitics
• Obesity and Coercion
• Ethical Consumerism A defense
• Food and the environment
• Hungry Because of Change Food, vulnerability, and climate
• Biodiversity and Development
• Sustainability
• Food and Environmental Justice
• Farming and eating other animals
• The Ethics of Humane Animal Agriculture
• Confinement Agriculture from a Moral Perspective The Pew Commission Report
• Animal Welfare
• Food, Welfare, and Agriculture A complex picture
• Animal Rights and Food Beyond Regan, beyond vegan
• Veganism Without Animal Rights1
• Ritual Slaughtering vs. Animal Welfare A utilitarian example of (moral) conflict management*
• Seafood Ethics The normative trials of Neptune's treasure
• Food justice
• Saving a Dynamic System Sustainable adaptation and the Balinese subak
• Labor and Local Food Farmworkers on smaller farms
• Indigenous Food Sovereignty, Renewal, and US Settler Colonialism
• Case Studies of Food Sovereignty Initiatives Among the Māori of Aotearoa (New Zealand)
• Individual and Community Identity in Food Sovereignty The possibilities and pitfalls of translating a rural social movement
• Responsibility for Hunger in Liberal Democracies
• Ethics of Food Waste
• Food Security and Ethics
• The New Three-Legged Stool Agroecology, food sovereignty, and food justice
• Participative Inequalities and Food Justice
• Index