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.. (shrink)

World Hunger and Morality contains the best current thinking about the appropriate moral response to world hunger. KEY TOPICS: The focus and content of this second edition is radically different from the first. Most of the essays are new to this volume. In fact, most of the new essays were written especially for this volume. It presents essays which helped shape the changing understanding of world hunger; includes work by some of today's pre-eminent ethicists; (...) discusses the problem of intra-national as well as international hunger; and considers how gender differences play a part in understanding, and solving world hunger. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Basic Options The Developmental Alternative Strong Obligation to Assist Conclusion Acknowledgments.

I canvass the major contending normative theories /approaches concerning the world hungerabsolute poverty problem by going through a set of questions— some normative, some empirical, and some a mixture of both—in order to elucidate what the germane issues are in this ongoing debate and in order to provide a decision procedure for progressively weeding out the less plausible theories from the more plausible ones until we arrive at what I believe to be the most plausible and well-supported theory and (...) solution to this momentous problem. Theories are eliminated if they are empirically unsupportable in terms of their analysis of the problem (or their recommendations aimed at solving the problems) and/or they are morally unsupportable in terms of not showing sufficient concern and respect for people in the design of the principles, rights, duties, and/or obligations they propose or, alternatively, not respecting the root values of autonomy and fairness. My main conclusion is that although Amartya Sen's capability ethic has made important contributions to moral theory, a Rawlsian theory (such as mine) that specifically accepts a Basic Rights principle is preferable to it since, for one reason, it is less vague in what policies are to be recommended on such issues as world hunger (given the same set of empirical assumptions). I also conclude that although Sen's empirical (economic and socialtheoretical) work on famines, hunger, and absolute poverty in general is to be much commended, it contains claims that are highly suspect. (shrink)

I canvass the major contending normative theories /approaches concerning the world hungerabsolute poverty problem by going through a set of questions— some normative, some empirical, and some a mixture of both—in order to elucidate what the germane issues are in this ongoing debate and in order to provide a decision procedure for progressively weeding out the less plausible theories from the more plausible ones until we arrive at what I believe to be the most plausible and well-supported theory and (...) solution to this momentous problem. Theories are eliminated if they are empirically unsupportable in terms of their analysis of the problem (or their recommendations aimed at solving the problems) and/or they are morally unsupportable in terms of not showing sufficient concern and respect for people in the design of the principles, rights, duties, and/or obligations they propose or, alternatively, not respecting the root values of autonomy and fairness. My main conclusion is that although Amartya Sen's capability ethic has made important contributions to moral theory, a Rawlsian theory (such as mine) that specifically accepts a Basic Rights principle is preferable to it since, for one reason, it is less vague in what policies are to be recommended on such issues as world hunger (given the same set of empirical assumptions). I also conclude that although Sen's empirical (economic and socialtheoretical) work on famines, hunger, and absolute poverty in general is to be much commended, it contains claims that are highly suspect. (shrink)

Why does world hunger hold an inferior place on the contemporary moral agenda? Proposed answer: because it is a political, not a moral problem. It is not a moral problem, because morality needs two conditions fulfilled: that those be in some way close to the agent unto whom that agent is doing something that is to be morally assessed; and that the relevant good or bad states or events can be clearly credited to some particular agent or agents. (...) Neither condition is fulfilled in the case of world hunger. This explains morality's failure to come to grips with it. Yet, while lacking morality's endorsement, the abolition of world hunger may still be a political goal. (shrink)

W e are watching television, and an advertisement for UNICEF, OXFAM, or the Christian Children’s Fund interrupts our favorite show. We grab our remotes and quickly flip to another channel. Perhaps we mosey to the kitchen for a snack. Maybe we just sit, trying not to watch. These machinations may banish these haunting images of destitute, starving children from our TVs and our thoughts, but they do not alter the brutal facts: millions of people in the world are undernourished; (...) thousands die each day; most of those who suffer and die are children, and, with collective effort we could end the suffering of millions without too much strain. At the same time, many of us talk as if we were nearly indigent. Relative to the rich in our society we may be financially strapped. But relative to most citizens of the world, we are awash with money. Given that, what, if anything, should we do, individually or collectively, to alleviate their suffering and save their lives? Most of us interpret this as asking: should we be charitable, and, if so, how charitable? That seems to be the guiding premise of organizations who implore us to send money: they tell us to open our hearts, to be generous, to give of ourselves, to help those in need. The character of their appeal reveals just how pervasive the “charity view” is. W e think that although it would be nice of us to assist the starving, none of us is morally required to assist them—that we have done nothing (very) wrong if we ignore those strangers in need. Indeed, most people assume that if we help, then we are moral heros. (shrink)

We live in a world in which one of every five persons does not get enough to eat. Each day more than ten thousand people die of starvation; thousands more, both adults and children, suffer brain damage and other functional abnormalities because of malnutrition. Often there is simply not enough drinking water or not enough food available. Some people must do without. A drought has come and some are allowed to die. Or, less food has been grown because less (...) fertilizer was imported and hundreds or thousands die. (shrink)

First in a new series of teaching materials to enable groups to reflect on and discuss issues of Christian Social Ethics in concrete situations. The materials include the fictional sto y, background to the personnel, historical background and issues for discussion.

Industry and mainstream research and policy institutions often suggest that transgenic crop varieties can raise the productivity of poor third world farmers, feed the hungry, and reduce poverty. These claims are critically evaluated by examining global-hunger data, the constraints that affect the productivity of small farmers in the third world, and the factors that explain their poverty. No significant role is found for crop genetics in determining hunger, productivity, or poverty, casting doubt on the ability of (...) new transgenic crop varieties produced by genetic engineering to address these problems. An examination of the special risks these varieties pose for poor farmers in the complex, diverse, and risk-prone environments that characterize peasant agriculture on a global scale suggests that transgenic crop varieties are likely to be more of hindrance than a help to the advancement of poor farmers. (shrink)

The large number of hungry people in a global economy based on industrialization, privatization, and free trade raises the question of the ethical dimensions of the worsening food crisis in the world in general and in developing countries in particular. Who bears the moral responsibility for the tragic situation in Africa and Asia where people are starving due to poverty? Who is morally responsible for their poverty - the hungry people themselves? the international community? any particular agency or institution? (...) In the context of Article 3 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security" (UNDHR, 1948), the ethical question of poverty and hunger becomes a major human concern that should be discussed publicly and resolved by whatever means available. But how can the poor and hungry realize their right to life and security if their very survival is at stake? This paper maintains that responsibility for global poverty at present lies in recent neo-liberal trends in the global economy and with those individuals and organizations who, though small in number, have acquired a disproportionate share of the world's assets and financial resources. That being the case, it is suggested that our monetary and financial policies are in need of drastic changes with regard to global responsibility towards the hungry and impoverished. (shrink)

Sen’s essay concerns the existence of extensive hunger amidst unprecedented global prosperity in the contemporary world, but he argues that the problem would be decisively solvable if our response were no longer shaped by Malthusian pessimism. Effective famine prevention does not turn on food supply per head and the automatic mechanism of the market: there can be plenty of food while large sections of the population lack the means to obtain it. Effective famine prevention thus requires “entitlements.” Economically, (...) governments can and should provide public employment programs so that those threatened by famine can be empowered to command food. Politically, democratic participation and a free press can work to ensure government accountability for famine prevention. The choice that Sen urges, however, is not for the state over the market—the experience of the Indian state of Kerala demonstrates that a voluntaristic approach can work as well or better than China’s compulsory “one child policy” in limiting the rapid population growth that contributes to world hunger. Rather, a reasoned solution to the problem of hunger must acknowledge the complementary importance of both well-functioning markets and open and democratic public action. (shrink)

Ending world hunger remains one of the central global challenges, but the question of how to measure and define the problem is politically charged. This article chronicles and analyses the indicator selection process for SDG 2.1, focusing in particular on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) indicator. Despite alleged efforts to separate political and technical aspects in the indicator selection process we find that they were entangled from the start. While there was significant contestation around which indicators should (...) be selected, the process was characterized by pathway lock-in: The complexity of food security quantification and the resource constraints in the process favored already established data infrastructures and milieus of expertise, locking in the position of FAO and its established food security indicators. The SDG 2.1 indicators frame food insecurity in terms of caloric supply and demand and individual experience, arguably excluding dimensions of democratic agency, sustainability and other dimensions and drivers of food insecurity. The lock-in has thus embedded a narrow concept of food security in the major global indicator framework for food security monitoring. This is likely to have significant effects on how food insecurity is addressed nationally and internationally. Addressing the knowledge politics of food security indicators is important to broaden and open the agenda for sustainable transformation of food systems. Statistics and indicators are important tools in this agenda, but a diversity of approaches and data infrastructures from the local to the international level are needed to understand the multiple dimensions and drivers of food insecurity. (shrink)

Governments and their international agencies (FAO, World Bank) conceive of the eradication of hunger and poverty as a worthy wish that will eventually be realized through economic growth. They also make great cosmetic efforts to present as good-looking trend pictures as they can. Citizens ought to insist that the eradication of severe deprivations is a human rights correlative duty that permits no avoidable delay. Academics ought to collaborate toward providing a systematic alternative monitoring of what progress has really (...) been made against undernourishment and other povertyrelated deprivations. (shrink)

The main claim of this article is that the plasticity of the human formation process does not consist in receiving passively an already-given shape, like hot wax stamped by a seal. Rather, it creates ever new shapes and makes a person overcome her own self-referential horizon. Furthermore, I argue that this formation process is directed by desire, meant as “hunger for being born completely” (Zambrano). The human being comes into the world without being born completely, and it is (...) precisely such hunger that directs human positioning into the world. (shrink)

In this article I develop two arguments, taking Max Scheler’s phenomenology as a starting point. The first one is that emotions are not private and internal states of consciousness, but what makes us come into contact with the expressive dimension of reality, by orienting our placement in the world and our interaction with others. The second thesis is that some emotions have an “anthropogenetic” nature that is at the roots of the ontology of a person and of social ontology: (...) it is through practices of “sharing” certain emotions that the humanity has been born and that the various forms of social realities are established. In accordance with one of María Zambrano’s phrases, I propose to trace these anthropogenetic emotions back to the «hambre de nacer del todo» («hunger for being fully born») of a being that never stops being born again. (shrink)

Hunger continues to be one of humanity's greatest challenges despite the existence of a more-than-adequate global food supply equal to 2,800 kilocalories for every person every day. In measuring progress, policy-makers and concerned citizens across the globe rely on information supplied by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an agency of the United Nations. In 2010 the FAO reported that in the wake of the 2007–2008 food-price spikes and global economic crisis, the number of people experiencing hunger worldwide (...) since 2005–2007 had increased by 150 million, rising above 1 billion in 2009. However, in itsState of Food Insecurity in the World 2012(SOFI 12) the FAO presented new estimates, having revamped its methods and reinterpreted its hunger data back to 1990. The revised numbers for the period 1990–1992 to 2010–2012 reverse the trend to a steadily falling one. Based on the FAO's new calculations, extreme undernourishment peaked in 1990 at a record-breaking one billion, followed by a significant decline through 2006, when progress stalled but did not reverse (see chart below). (shrink)

For decades, aesthetics has been subjected to a variety of critiques, often concerning its treatment of beauty or the autonomy of art. Collectively, these complaints have generated an anti-aesthetic stance prevalent in the contemporary art world. Yet if we examine the motivations for these critiques, Michael Kelly argues, we find theorists and artists hungering for a new kind of aesthetics, one better calibrated to contemporary art and its moral and political demands. Following an analysis of the work of Stanley (...) Cavell, Arthur Danto, Umberto Eco, Susan Sontag, and other philosophers of the 1960s who made aesthetics more responsive to contemporary art, Kelly considers Sontag's aesthetics in greater detail. In _On Photography_ (1977), she argues that a photograph of a person who is suffering only aestheticizes the suffering for the viewer's pleasure, yet she insists in _Regarding the Pain of Others_ (2003) that such a photograph can have a sustainable moral-political effect precisely because of its aesthetics. Kelly considers this dramatic change to be symptomatic of a cultural shift in our understanding of aesthetics, ethics, and politics. He discusses these issues in connection with Gerhard Richter's and Doris Salcedo's art, chosen because it is often identified with the anti-aesthetic, even though it is clearly aesthetic. Focusing first on Richter's Baader-Meinhof series, Kelly concludes with Salcedo's enactments of suffering caused by social injustice. Throughout _A Hunger for Aesthetics_, he reveals the place of critique in contemporary art, which, if we understand aesthetics as critique, confirms that it is integral to art. Meeting the demand for aesthetics voiced by many who participate in art, Kelly advocates for a critical aesthetics that confirms the limitless power of art. (shrink)

In animals, nervous systems regulate the ingestion of food and water in a manner that reflects internal metabolic need. While the coordination of these two ingestive behaviors is essential for homeostasis, it has been unclear how internal signals of hunger and thirst interact to effectively coordinate food and water ingestion. In the last year, work in insects and mammals has begun to elucidate some of these interactions. As reviewed here, these studies have identified novel molecular and neural mechanisms that (...) coordinate the regulation of food and water ingestion behaviors. These mechanisms include peptide signals that modulate neural circuits for both thirst and hunger, neurons that regulate both food and water ingestion, and neurons that integrate sensory information about both food and water in the external world. These studies argue that a deeper understanding of hunger and thirst will require closer examination of how these two biological drives interact. (shrink)

An argument is advanced to show that affluent and moderately affluent people, like you and me, are morally obligated: (O1) To provide modest financial support for famine relief organizations and/or other humanitanan organizations working to reduce the amount of unnecessary suffering and death in the world, and (O2) To refrain from squandering food that could be fed to humans in situations of food scarcity. Unlike other ethical arguments for the obligation to assist the world’s absolutely poor, my argument (...) is not predicated on any highly contentious ethical theory that you likely reject. Rather, it is predicated on your beliefs. The argument shows that the things you currently believe already commit you to the obligatoriness of helping to reduce malnutrition and famine-related diseases by sending a nominal percentage of your income to famine relief organizations and by not squandering food that could be fed to them. Consistency with your own beliefs implies that to do any less is to be profoundly immoral. (shrink)

Public collective hunger strikes take place in complex social and political contexts, require medical attention and present ethical challenges to physicians. Empirical research, the ethical debate to date and existing guidelines by the World Medical Association focus almost exclusively on hunger strikes in detention. However, the public space differs substantially with regard to the conditions for the provision of health care and the diverse groups of healthcare providers or stakeholders involved. By reviewing empirical research on the experience (...) of health professionals with public collective hunger strikes, we identified the following ethical challenges: (1) establishment of a trustful physician–striker relationship, (2) balancing of medico‐ethical principles in medical decision‐making, (3) handling of loyalty conflicts and (4) preservation of professional independence and the risk of political instrumentalization. Some of these challenges have already been described and discussed, yet not contextualized for public collective strikes, while others are novel. The presence of voluntary physicians may offer opportunities for a trustful relationship and, hence, for ethical treatment decisions. According to our findings, it requires more attention to how to realise autonomous medical decisions in the complex context of a dynamic, often unstructured and politically charged setting, which ethical norms should shape the professional role of voluntary physicians, and what is the influence of the hunger strikers' collective on individual healthcare decisions. Our article can serve as a starting point for further ethical discussion. It can also provide the basis for the development of potential guidelines to support health professionals involved in public collective hunger strikes. (shrink)

Accessible, flexible, and affordable, The World of Philosophy: An Introductory Reader presents philosophy in all its diverse array of thought and practice, offering standard Western historical and analytic materials alongside writings from Chinese, Indian, Native-American, African American, continental, and other sources. Approximately 25% of the contemporary readings are by women, including leading feminist theorists. Many articles have been edited to sharpen their focus and make them understandable to students with little or no background in philosophy. The readings are enhanced (...) by introductions, study questions, and a glossary at the end of the book. A new online Ancillary Resource Center and a Companion Website at www.oup.com/us/cahn offer additional resources for instructors and students.Featuring not only essential readings from the Western canon but also selections on compelling topics like Hindu and Buddhist conceptions of the self, Confucian and Buddhist morality, world hunger, animal rights, sexism, and racism, The World of Philosophy offers students a distinctive blend of traditional and non-traditional perspectives. (shrink)