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CFP – Food Ethics/Politics Conference – March 20th, 2010
The Toad Lane Vegan Cooperative, a division of Campus Co-operative Residences Inc. and with support from TBA presents a conference on Veganism and the Politics and ethics of Food and Eating, entitled:
Free Food! Interrogating Perception, Choice and Progress in the Liberation of our Food Supply
What is “Free” in our food? How is it subsidized, and how does that affect what kind of food choices are readily available to us? And to what extent is our food “unfree” – how much domination of animals and workers occurs such that it becomes “easy” to eat certain diets and difficult to stick to others? What about animal rights, or welfare – is it right to cause harm to a feeling thing when you can avoid it? How is our perception of food a product of social control, of old inappropriate narratives of “authenticity” and gender stereotypes? What about the perceptions of “healthy” food and the diet industry, isn’t “nutrition” a fad anyway? Where is choice left when we are so separated from the realities of production? What does it matter what I eat? How can my choices have broader social implications, how can they be steps on the way to attaining ideals which are not yet universalized? And what is progress – social, technological – and what about moral progress?
You don’t need to be Vegan to come to this conference – but you should be open to discussing its possibility as a serious practice.
Some options for topics include (but are not limited to):
Veganism and Virtue Ethics
Eating as political Strategy
Veganism and Alienation
Diet and Revolution
Decision making and eating
Diet and the Body
Health and Desire
The Alimentary Body
Lifestylism and Veganism
Defending/Attacking Lifestylism
Nutrition: myths and realities
The Ethics of Commitment
Body Patterns, Buddhism and spiritual health
(non-human) Animal Rights and legal challenges
(non-human) Animal Welfare and the idea of compassion
What is an Animal?/ What is a non human animal?
(non-human) Animal Rights and Human Rights
Veganism and Child Slavery/Genocide/Class struggle (i.e. why care about animals when humans are in need)
Presentations can be a talk followed by questions, a facilitation of discussion, a cooking workshop (we can actually host part of the conference inside our kitchen), or a dance, or an outside activity (weather permitting, there is a park next to our house). Talks should be limited to 20 minutes to leave time for questions, facilitated discussions or activities that include audience involvement should be no more than 30 minutes.
Abstracts/Workshop proposals are due January 15th
Email all proposals and questions to toad.lane.vegan.cooperative@gmail.com
If you have a longer presentation that you think is worthwhile, contact us about it and we may be able to accommodate.
2 Comments so far
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My abstract:
“Rights” by any other name
In my paper I will distinguish between two ways of talking about “rights”. One is the basis of contracts, and originates from mutual recognition and moral conflict, and the other comes from our duty to consider the interests of others even in situations where mutual recognition is not possible. I will argue that a weakness in employing rights discourse for animal liberation follows from confusing the first kind of rights discourse for the second. Finally, I will argue that the difference between the right kind of rights discourse for animal liberation, and animal welfarism, is actually a difference in tactics and strategy – not a difference in fundamental value or ethical principle. My analysis will conclude by attempting to situate the current moment in the animal liberation movement in history through comparison with other historical struggles of ideals/principles against their lack of enforcement.
Comment by northernsong January 12, 2010 @ 2:06 amAnother abstract
“Against the bare minimum”
In this paper I will oppose the notion that ethical life can be simplified by positing an achievable moral standard which is the “bare minimum” qualification of moral action – above which one is morally praiseworthy for reaching, but not culpable for failing to attempt. Instead, I will assert that any serious ethical perspective sets the moral bar higher than can be reached. Our failure to achieve our own moral standard ought not subject us to constant guilt, however, but rather free us from the dogma that ethics is decidable. This is not nihilism, however – our ethical ideals remain, but they remain in such a way that we strive towards them without the need to set them low enough to achieve, or console ourselves with knowledge of good intentions. An ethics of “no bare minimum” allows us to grasp ethical life as a kind of sustained trauma. This trauma, I argue, is not something to be avoided – it is the authentic human condition itself.
Comment by northernsong January 14, 2010 @ 2:21 am