Regarding the seed and meat industry and our contemplative practice for module 9. I thought a lot about how I feel about the choices I make when I eat and why I chose to make them. Do I even care, or do I choose what to eat because I like it? Thinking about this module and then doing the contemplative… Read more »
When I used to facilitate anti-oppression workshops, I often would talk about the process of recognition and disentanglement from –isms that occurs as one learns about oppression. First, there is unconscious ignorance, which through learning is followed by conscious ignorance. This means that you are aware of what you don’t know and are taking the time to learn. Next, there… Read more »
Our relationship with our food has changed, as has the perception of our impact. These two elements of our introspective analysis have come together in our search for a better way address hunger, be less wasteful, be more healthy, and become more sustainable. In my own exploration of food and the relationships it has to politics, economics, health, social justice,… Read more »
Hunger is in effect a systemic issue. Our media over simplifies it to a lack of food or resources when we must in-fact look at a broader system that changes how and why there is hunger in a world where we have enough food to feed everyone. There are an assortment of complex variables at play. First we see… Read more »
The realities of the world food system carry emotional and moral weight. Images of hunger to the point of starvation, especially of children, is not just difficult to see, but difficult to know exist at this very moment around the world. The statistics and numbers are one aspect, but the level of suffering that is ongoing before the statistical metric… Read more »
I enjoyed reading Karen Litfin’s work in “Thinking Like a Planet.” It goes along with some of the questions I have been asking about using Earth Systems to inform human systems, making them circular rather than linear. It was nice to see ideas and examples of how it is being done, such as virtuous cycles rather than vicious cycles. I… Read more »
The wide range of families and diets portrayed by Menzel and D’Alusio’s illustrate both the diversity in cultural foods, while also highlighting the wide spread disparities. When looking at the dietary contents of the various cultures, a striking number of cultures were consuming a lot of processed and pre-packaged foods, this was more prevalent in areas that would typically be… Read more »
Hunger is a biological state that practically all humans experience in their lifetime, to varying degrees. In contemplating the experience of hunger, I was struck by the universality of the sensation. It is an issue that has persisted, unsolved and unchanged, throughout human history. On a global scale, an overwhelming range of complex forces and feedback loops are at work in… Read more »
By the third week of class I felt that I had gotten more out of the contemplative exercise than I had previously. I truly gained some insight into myself that was different than the weeks before. It was different because I didn’t want to acknowledge it. Coincidentally I worked for an German Chocolatier and when I was in high school. Before… Read more »
Social justice and equity are important areas of exploration in the political ecology of the world food system. Socioeconomic factors contribute greatly to resource and information access, and those in vulnerable circumstances seem to have significantly increased risk factors in both overall health and exposure to contaminants due to the food they consume. As Norah MacKendrick points out, for her… Read more »