[interphen] Call for papers: JUST FOOD: bioethics, gender, and the ethics of eating

  • From: Angus Dawson <a.j.dawson@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: InterPHEN <INTERPHEN@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2013 17:53:11 +0000

JUST FOOD: bioethics, gender, and the ethics of eating

Special issue of the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics

Mary C. Rawlinson, Editor

 

The deadline for submission to this issue is April 1, 2014.

 

Western ethics rarely makes eating a main theme. Food belongs to the often 
invisible domain of women’s labor.  While obesity, malnourishment, and lack of 
access to clean water are regularly cited as global factors in mortality and 
morbidity, bioethics, even feminist bioethics, gives little attention to 
culinary practices, water rights, or agricultural policy or to their effects on 
the status of women and the health of communities.   

 

What and how we eat determines not only our health, but also our relation to 
other animals, the forms of social life, the gender division of labor, and the 
integrity of the environment. If hunger is the hallmark of poverty, obesity and 
obesity related diseases are ironically afflicting the poor at alarming rates. 
Hunger also attends war, violence, and catastrophic environmental events; thus, 
thinking ethically about food engages issues of war and peace, as well as 
calling into question the global dependence on fossil fuels. Food can reflect 
social inequity or economic independence and social justice. It can preserve 
cultural integrity or yield to the homogenizing force of global capital. Food 
encompasses the full range of issues arising at the intersection of health and 
justice.

 

The Editorial Office of IJFAB invites submissions for JUST FOOD: bioethics, 
gender, and the ethics of eating, vol. 8.2.  Essays may investigate any aspect 
of the ethics of eating, particularly as it relates to health and gender.

 

Women are disproportionately responsible for food around the world, yet they 
are globally underrepresented in the ownership of property or decisions about 
land use or in determining environmental or food policy.  As the spike in 
obesity among women and children in “low-income” countries under the shift to 
global food indicates, women, like other vulnerable and underrepresented 
populations, are disproportionately affected by the globalization of food, as 
well as by environmental degradation and climate change.

 

Research suggests, however, that women are also “key drivers of change,” 
necessary to improving food production and consumption, as well as 
environmental health in any community.  “If you pull women out, there will be 
no sustainable development.” (Report of Regional Implementation Meeting for 
Asia and Pacific Rim, Jakarta, 2007.)

 

IJFAB 8.2 will investigate the bioethical problems that result from the 
industrialization and globalization of agriculture, as well as the role of 
feminist bioethics in reimaging agriculture and our culinary practices to be 
more life-sustaining and to better promote justice, community health, and 
agency for each and all.  Only very recently have large populations been able 
to eat without any knowledge of how their food is produced. This issue explores 
the question of our responsibility for what and how we eat, as well as global 
responsibilities for hunger and diet-related disease.

 

Possible areas of research include:

·       hunger and poverty

·       hunger and violence

·       consumption and health

·       immobility, obesity, and agency

·       animal rights

·       environmental ethics

·       ethics of land and water policies

·       agricultural policy and economic independence

·       scale in farming

·       food security

·       sustainability

·       local vs. global food

·       geopolitics of food

·       food as commodity

·       biotechnology

·       food and labor

·       eating and culture

·       the aesthetics of food

·       food and community.

 

All essays must be submitted in IJFAB style. Style guidelines are available at 
www.ijfab.org Authors who plan to submit are encouraged to contact the Editor 
ahead of time.

-
Angus Dawson,
Professor of Public Health Ethics,
Head of Medicine, Ethics, Society & History (MESH),
90, Vincent Drive,
School of Health & Population Sciences,
College of Medical and Dental Sciences,
University of Birmingham,
Edgbaston,
Birmingham,
B15 2TT.
UK.

Email: a.j.dawson@xxxxxxxxxx
Tel: +44 (0) 121 414 2957
 
Web: http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/angus-dawson

IAB 11th Congress: 26th-29th June 2012. Rotterdam
http://bioethicsrotterdam.com/

Recent publication:  A. Dawson (ed.) Public Health Ethics: Key Concepts in 
Policy and Practice. Cambridge University Press.
See: www.cambridge.org/9780521689366
 

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  • » [interphen] Call for papers: JUST FOOD: bioethics, gender, and the ethics of eating - Angus Dawson