Abstract
This paper considerw how a discourse on sustainability is altering the way we think about the human body and its relationship to food. The engine for this change, I argue, is the cultural life attributed to biological diversity as this has become the resource that is needed in order to ensure that we have access to food in the future. Our relationship to a “food environment” undergoes an important shift in this discourse: from a resource in need of our protection to one whose preservation provides plant scientists and farmers with the tools that they need to generate food in the future (Hayden 2003). I am especially interested in the implications of this shift for the way that we think about the body and it’s health. Can we continue to view health in terms of the nutrition sciences, where the metabolism of the body is understood in relationship to a “universal” world outside (Landecker 2013)? Or must we imagine now that the information in our environment is telling the body too what it can be? Discourse on food security are discussed in relationship to earlier campaigns against global hunger, specifically the Rockefeller Foundation’s investments in the Green Revolution along side discourse on nutrition, communication technology, biotechnology, and biological diversity.
Presenters
Elizabeth BullockAssistant Professor of Sociology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Alfred State College of Technology, SUNY, New York, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Sustainability, Food Security, Biological Diversity, The Global Seed Vault
