Vulnerability, Relationality, and Dependency: Feminist Conceptual Resources for Food Justice

Abstract

This article articulates how core concepts in feminist ethical and social theory such as vulnerability, relationality, and dependency are central for understanding both injustices in contemporary food systems and how best to pursue food justice. It argues that denials of dependency, relationality, and vulnerability take the form of normal, but ethically problematic, attitudes and practices, such as reductionism, detachment, and privatization, and thus constitute the underlying shared roots of myriad agricultural and food-related injustices. In particular, this feminist approach helps resolve the tension between critiques of the industrial food system and critiques of the sociocultural politics of food and health.