Monday, July 20, 2020, 11:30 AM – 1 PM EDT

Deric Shannon, Associate Professor of Sociology, Oxford College of Emory University

"Food Justice: A Sociological Perspective"

The “right to food” is proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and yet more than fifty years after its proclamation by the United Nations General Assembly, the UN estimates “that over 2 billion people do not have regular access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food, including 8 per cent of the population in North America and Europe.” These numbers vary considerably in group percentages as they intersect with a range of relations of inequality. The normative issues involved when we invoke justice, particularly social versions of those invocations, are central to questions surrounding food – and not just access to it. This talk will focus on sociologically informed approaches to food justice and how food intersects with larger relations of inequality in myriad ways.