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Dr. Julian Agyeman, Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, and Fletcher Professor of Rhetoric and Debate at Tufts University, is one of the leading thinkers in environmental justice and food justice. In this talk, Julian will outline the concept of just sustainabilities as a response to the ‘equity deficit’ of much sustainability thinking and practice. He will explore his contention that who can belong in our cities will ultimately determine what our cities can become. He will illustrate his ideas with examples from urban planning and design, the ‘Minneapolis Paradox’ and food justice.
This keynote presentation and Q&A will be moderated by Dr. Kristin Reynolds, Chair of Food Studies in the Bachelor’s Program for Adults and Transfer Students within the Schools of Public Engagement.
Presented by the Food Studies Program in the Bachelor’s Program for Adults and Transfer Students, the Environmental Studies and Urban Studies programs in the Global-Urban-Environmental Studies Program (GLUE) within the Schools of Public Engagement, and the university-wide Tishman Environment and Design Center.
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Food studies scholar and nutritionist Dr. Marion Nestle has observed that food studies has continually evolved alongside the food movement, and has asked food studies to contribute to “changing the world.”[1] Dr. Psyche Williams-Forson, also a key food scholar, situated in American studies, insists on bringing an intersectional approach to food studies. She argues that intersectionality theory’s commitment to social justice and to “dismantling” unjust power structures would strengthen food studies by enabling it to better understand dynamics of the food system.[2] Critical food geographer Julie Guthman observes that food justice researchers often seek to support food movements through their work. She pushes such scholars to do so with a commitment to the integrity of engaged scholarship and scientific inquiry.[3] These influential thinkers and writers, among many others, illustrate the diversity and interdisciplinarity of food studies. Each analyzes food system issues – including as food politics, racialized and gendered dimensions of food and foodways, and the hegemony of neoliberalism in the food system, respectively—through a “critical” lens that situates food system injustices in broader social and political structures. Critical food studies helps us to understand food systems at levels deeper than the food that we eat or even the specific cultural foodways with which we may be familiar as individuals and communities. But critical thinking about the food system is decidedly not the purview of academics alone. Knowledge creation and communication occurs through many venues including design and urban planning, popular education, community organizing, and music.
Collectively these understandings can help us make sense often-complex food systems dynamics, their intertwinings in societal inequity at multiple scales, and, importantly, ways forward to a more just food system.
The Food Studies Program’s “Critical Food Studies and Social Justice” Spring 2022 Series engages with these ideas through a diverse line up of online panel discussions, keynote talks, and multimedia presentations. Please email us at foodstudies@newschool.edu for more information about upcoming events and registration.
[1] Nestle, M. 2010. Writing the Food Studies Movement. Food, Culture and Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research. 13 (2): 162-170.
[2] Williams-Forson, P. and Wilkerson, A. 2011 Intersectionality and Food Studies. Food, Culture and Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research. 14(1): 7-28.
[3] Guthman, Julie. 2008. “Bringing Good Food to Others: Investigating the Subjects of Alternative Food Practice.” Cultural Geographies. 15, no. 4: 431–47.
The Food Studies Program at The New School centers the connections between food, culture, social policy, and the environment, through its interdisciplinary curriculum, faculty expertise, and public event series. The degree program is open to adults, transfer students, and other nontraditional undergraduates who can earn a bachelor's degree and/or an associate in applied science (AAS) degree, exploring course subjects ranging from food systems and food media to global food security and public health issues like obesity and malnutrition. The public events spotlight cutting edge food systems issues such as “Food and Power,” “Food and the Public,” and the Spring 2022 “Critical Food and Social Justice Series.”
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Julian Agyeman Ph.D. FRSA FRGS is a Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, and Fletcher Professor of Rhetoric and Debate at Tufts University. He is the originator of the increasingly influential concept of just sustainabilities, the intentional integration of social justice and environmental sustainability. He centers his research on critical explorations of the complex and embedded relations between humans and the urban environment, whether mediated by governments or social movement organizations, and their effects on public policy and planning processes and outcomes, particularly in relation to notions of justice and equity.
He believes that what our cities can become (sustainable, smart, sharing and resilient) and who is allowed to belong in them (recognition of difference, diversity, and a right to the city) are fundamentally and inextricably interlinked. We must therefore act on both belonging and becoming, together, using just sustainabilities as the anchor, or face deepening spatial and social inequities and inequalities.
He is the author or editor of 12 books, including Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World (MIT Press, 2003), Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class and Sustainability (MIT Press, 2011), and Sharing Cities: A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities (MIT Press, 2015), one of Nature’s Top 20 Books of 2015. In 2018, he was awarded the Athena City Accolade by KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, for his “outstanding contribution to the field of social justice and ecological sustainability, environmental policy and planning“. In November 2021, he was invited by then Boston Mayor-Elect Michelle Wu to be a Transition Advisor on her Transition Committee.
For a full biography please visit: https://julianagyeman.com
