From world hunger to food sovereignty: food ethics and human development

The role of Amartya Sen's early work on famine notwithstanding, food security is generally seen as but one capability among many for scholars writing in development ethics. The early literature on the ethics of hunger is summarized to show how Sen's Poverty and Famines was written in respo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of global ethics
Main Author: Thompson, Paul B. 1951- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group 2015
In: Journal of global ethics
Further subjects:B food entitlements
B Agency
B Capabilities
B Development Ethics
B Food Security
B the right to food
Online Access: Volltext (kostenfrei)
Description
Summary:The role of Amartya Sen's early work on famine notwithstanding, food security is generally seen as but one capability among many for scholars writing in development ethics. The early literature on the ethics of hunger is summarized to show how Sen's Poverty and Famines was written in response to debates of past decades, and a brief discussion of food security as a capability follows. However, Sen's characterization of smallholder food security also supports the development of agency in both a political and an economic sense. Economic agency is discussed and tied to longstanding literatures on the moral significance of farming within political economy. Finally, while the newly emergent literature on food sovereignty includes many themes, it is shown to be re-articulating arguments that stress smallholder's economic agency as a development goal. This pattern of argument thus provides a way to reconcile at least some of the claims being advanced under the banner of food sovereignty with the human development approach, while also restoring food ethics to a more central place in the overall discourse of development ethics.
ISSN:1744-9634
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of global ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/17449626.2015.1100651