Course Description
Summary
In this class we will examine the way food is used as social tool to produce power, exploitation, and waste. We will review the use of food in political movements such as the Catholic Worker House and Black Panthers Free Food Program, as well as hunger strikes as an individual tool of political freedom and not eating animals as a form of political resistance. We will also review the way contemporary food production influences both the labor force (restaurant workers and farm laborers) as well as governance through industrial protein production (beef, pork, and chicken) and agriculture (soy, wheat, and corn). We will follow the legislation that produced the Farm Bill, SNAP – supplemental nutritional assistance program formerly known as food stamps, crop subsidies, crop insurance, in addition to Americas relationship to global food security. We will also focus on environmental disasters and disruption of food and water access that primarily affect poor people. Finally, we will focus on the way we create identity and personhood through how we define ourselves individually, socially, and ethnically through food and eating.
