Instructor: (Br.) Keith Douglass Warner OFM
(kwarner@scu.edu)
Environment Studies Institute
Santa Clara University
Santa Clara, California
www.scu.edu/envs/campus/esf/index.html
ENVS 161 Course description:
The fundamental aim of this course is to introduce Catholic theological perspectives on agriculture, the environment, and food. Catholic social teaching is a coherent body of thought that brings Gospel-based justice to bear on modern ethical problems. Students in this course will learn about the development of Catholic social teaching and how it articulates a vision of agriculture that balances food provision and environmental stewardship. Dramatic changes have taken place in our modern agrofood system over the past century, and Catholic teaching has an abundance of religious resources for constructively engaging it. The course is structured to give students a solid grounding in Catholic thought about agriculture, food and the environment, and fulfill the second level course for the religious studies requirement in the area of Theology, Ethics, and Spirituality.
Our point of departure will be the origin and development of Catholic social teaching on the dignity of the human person, the moral responsibilities of society, economic justice, and the ecological vocation of stewardship. Modern agriculture will serve as a concrete case in which to track the evolution of this body of religious thought. Agriculture is the most fundamental economic project in society, yet it carries inherent ethical tensions between production and conservation. How has Catholic teaching managed these tensions? Why should students in a predominantly urban society care about theologies of agriculture? We will survey theologies of agriculture in other traditions to see how they are addressing these tensions and to contextualize Catholic approaches. The Catholic Church and some Protestant denominations have historically engaged the pastoral needs of rural people, and are beginning to make claims on broader social institutions to reform the agrofood system. We will survey those claims and the theologies that underlie them, and critique them from empirical and ethical perspectives, deploying Paul Thompson’s ethical norm of sustainability for fostering alternatives.
Modern agriculture cannot be understood apart from the agrofood system build around it: land, people, biological organisms, and technologies; and the socio-ecological institutions that order them. We will investigate the series of social and technological transformations that have resulted in this food system, and then turn to its environmental impacts: loss of soil, despoliation of water, pollution of air, and degradation of genetic and ecological diversity. Rural communities, especially farm workers, suffer disproportionately from the environmental degradation of the modern agrofood system. We will also survey its social impacts, including hunger, obesity and the relationship between health and diet. Many critics of the current agrofood system lay the primary responsibility for these problems at the steps of the major economic institutions that have gathered unprecedented power over the past generation. The course is roughly divided in half: the first frames out issues, problems, and norms for the modern agrofood system, while the second investigates potential solutions.
The design of this class offers upper division Environmental Studies/Science majors the opportunity to learn about the social, ethical and religious institutions shaping our modern agrofood system, building on their knowledge of environmental issues and integrating that with their faith and ethical beliefs. It is, however, open to all students.
Student learning goals
1. To acquire mastery of Catholic social teaching as a coherent body of ethical thought that can be used to evaluate the relationship between society and nature.
2. To understand the development of Catholic social teachings about agriculture through time.
3. To learn about the field of "agrofood studies" and to survey the dramatic changes that have taken place in the relationships between the environment, agriculture, food, and culture over the past century.
4. To analyze the ethical implications of the institutions that shaping the environmental and social impacts of the modern agrofood system.
5. To reflect on their own position and moral agency within the modern agrofood system.
6. To introduce agro-environmental ethics as a framework for addressing the environmental and social problems in agriculture.
7. To develop ethical and theological tools to make compelling moral arguments reconciling food production and environmental resource protection for an interdisciplinary audience.
Required assignments
1. Map the agrofood system. Identify as many institutions as you can in the agrofood system and put them within the agrofood system model presented in class. Underline or highlight the components of the agrofood system that you know best, and indicate the areas you understand least. Develop this map on a sheet (or some sheets) of butcher paper, or construct this on a computer program.
2. Two options:
a. Document what you eat. Rigorously record all the food and beverage items you eat for one week. Keep track of the economic cost you paid, and do the best you can to document where in the world the food products came from. You can track your caloric consumption, if you like.
b. Investigate the food system on campus. Where does it come from? What are its ethical implications?
3. Reflect on the beef system. This course will include substantial material on industrial beef, including a text book, a video, and a required field trip. Write a five-page paper that identifies one ethical issue raised by the industrial production of beef, reflects on alternative modes of production and distribution, and develops an ethical framework to argue for or against the alternatives.
4. Trace the development of an agricultural issue through the corpus of Catholic social teaching. Examples include: the purpose of agriculture, agricultural stewardship, the moral significance of family farming, stewardship of creation as a moral responsibility, the ethics of hunger in a agrofood system of abundance, the ethics of food safety, the rights of farmworkers, the moral standing of agricultural animals, land use/reform, and sustainability as an ethical project. You must explicitly refer to Catholic social teaching to support your views. You must describe how Catholic thinking about this issue has evolved over time, and why. You are certainly free to critique shortcomings of Catholic social teaching, and make recommendations for their further development.
5. Write a reflection response to the Grapes of Wrath film and its relevance to the justice, agriculture, land, or farm labor.
6. With one other person, create some kind of accessible educational tool using Catholic social teaching as a framework for understanding the ethics of the modern agrofood system and the environment. This tool should be designed to be used by the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, and be based on principles in "I Was Hungry" or "Eating is a Moral Act." Examples of this tool could be: a webpage, an electronic slide presentation, a pdf reflection guide for a parish, or a set of church bulletin inserts.