Eating Anxiety: The Perils of Food Politics

Description

Debates about obesity are really about the meaning of responsibility. The trend toward local foods reflects the changing nature of space due to new communication technologies. Vegetarian theory capitalizes on biotechnology's challenge to the meaning of species. And food politics, as this book makes powerfully clear, is actually about the political anxieties surrounding globalization.

Chad Lavin is associate professor of political science and social, political, ethical, and cultural thought (ASPECT) at Virginia Tech. He is the author of The Politics of Responsibility.

"In Eating Anxiety, Chad Lavin steadfastly rejects what have come to be cliches about our modern relation to food and gives us new answers to old questions about what makes us anxious about food. His innovative analysis tacks back and forth between political philosophy and contemporary food treatises to show how ethical consumption is founded on untenable notions of the liberal, disembodied subject-ironically so. Taking swipes at obesity hysteria, food localism, and post-humanism alike, Lavin asks us to confront our anxieties-including those about our failing democracy-rather than to seek solace in individualist approaches to food system change." -Julie Guthman, author of Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism "Ultimately, Lavin reveals how current philosophical and sociohistorical approaches to food help support neoliberal interests, suggesting the need to create alternatives to consumer actions as forms of resistance."-CHOICE "Eating Anxiety offers a creative and useful contribution that will foster discussion and further inquiry for those interested in the politics of food."-Perspectives on Politics