Agrindus Come Round: Eating Your Ethics or Mouth On the Money

November 6, 2016 4:53 AM

Eating Right, Harper's, by John Herron I think that the metaphor of seeing ethics in terms of a supermarket array of consumption decisions is all too pervasive in contemporary society. -- Philosopher Paul B. Thompson

Food ethics can take us beyond the simple cause and effect thinking that characterizes a utilitarian endorsement of the “better shopping” strategy. In fact, I think that the metaphor of seeing ethics in terms of a supermarket array of consumption decisions is all too pervasive in contemporary society. As an environmental philosopher, I’ve advocated the “systems perspective” and suggested that a focus on outcomes and consumption generally tends to overlook features that can drive a system toward collapse. But one weakness of the systems approach is that it has very little resonance with the experience of an ordinary person. I am hopeful that food ethics may provide some baby steps toward remedying that situation. -- Philosopher Paul B. Thompson

posted by lazycomputerkids (8 comments total)

"Thompson holds the W.K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural Food and Community Ethics at Michigan State University." [my emphasis]
posted by hawthorne at 5:45 AM on November 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

This is a frustrating interview, because he gestures at systemic problems (why are the starving people in the world so often farmers?), but doesn't care to say what they are. Maybe he does in his book, but, as hawthorne points out above, the author may have some fealty to the corporate food industry, so, maybe not.
posted by kozad at 7:06 AM on November 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

The W.K. Kellogg Chair is funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, privately endowed by a member of the Kellogg family in the 1930s, not by the company.

Which doesn't mean the role is not compromised by a conflict of interests, but this is one of those complicated problems: Funding an academic chair is expensive, and an entity is unlikely to sponsor one that has no relevance whatsoever to their own interests, so you have to hope that the backer is doing it with some degree of enlightened self interest, because you can't expect, say, Intel to underwrite research on food ethics, and at the same time it doesn't seem like a topic of sufficiently high profile or progressive interest to draw diverse independent funding at some school that doesn't have a major agricultural or food sciences program.
posted by ardgedee at 8:13 AM on November 6, 2016 [4 favorites]

I think this is the key piece:

So I’m definitely not against enlightened consumer choice, but enlightened consumer choice alone will not address these larger structural problems. What is more, simply spending more on food just shifts the burden right back on the poor. Food ethics requires a conversation on how we should tackle these complex problems above and beyond the way we change our personal diets.

And actually, I think the emphasis on "personal choice" really takes the responsibility off big corporations and government bodies. In fact, it takes something that could really challenge multinational companies and turns it into something they can make money off. We saw the same thing in the environmental movement as far back as the 70s - companies were able to co-opt a lot of the rising sentiment and turn a lot of the energy away from grassroots organizing for environmental justice towards "green living" things like turning the lights off and buying "green" products.
posted by lunasol at 8:44 AM on November 6, 2016 [17 favorites]

Interesting article. While not directly related, this program seems to working well, the problem I see getting more people to participate.
posted by clavdivs at 9:22 AM on November 6, 2016

@kozad: irt impoverished farmers
Half of the world's poorest people have something in common: they're small farmers. In this eye-opening talk, activist Andrew Youn shows how his group, One Acre Fund, is helping these farmers lift themselves out of poverty by delivering to them life-sustaining farm services that are already in use all over the world.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 11:17 AM on November 6, 2016

I don't mean to use the term as a smear but it seems to me neo-liberalism has become so entrenched in the zeitgeist that any appeals to complexity are met with skepticism. The ethics of anything seem to be condensed to shopping these days, and earnestly too. I remember attending a lecturette by the authors of the idea that the "old environmentalism" was dead, that consumption choices led by effective branding were the only political expression that mattered. They believed that environmentalism was a middle class affectation/value and so the world had to become middle class, had to consume itself to save itself.

I welcome the embrace of complexity in ethics and thought.
posted by Pembquist at 8:06 PM on November 6, 2016

At the risk of threadsitting, one reason I posted this article was NatGeo/Caprio's recent Before the Flood "documentary" that emphasizes consumer choice, positing "people" must change before leaders are held accountable (paraphrase). I'm grateful to lunasol's reading of the article and disappointed by cursory conjecture.

And though I do buy into (pun intended) consumer choices as a variable, framing and narratives steer a debate (realization) and am fond of quoting Erica Jong: The right wing has redefined reproductive choice. They've captured the language. They say that they're 'pro-life' and many young people think that they are pro-life, too. They (the right wing) won the linguistic debate. And when you win the linguistic debate, you've won the debate. Period.

Most everyone was at the races today anyway.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 8:53 PM on November 6, 2016