Practicing food anxiety: Making Australian mothers responsible for their families’ dietary decisions

Concerns about the relationship between diet, weight, and health find widespread expression in the media and are accompanied by significant individual anxiety and responsibilization. However, these pertain especially to mothers, who undertake the bulk of domestic labor involved in managing their families’ health and wellbeing. This article employs the concept of anxiety as social practice to explore the process whereby mothers are made accountable for their families’ dietary decisions. Drawing on data from an Australian study that explored the impact of discourses of childhood obesity prevention on mothers, the article argues that mothers’ engagements with this value-laden discourse are complex and ambiguous, involving varying degrees of self-ascribed responsibility and blame for children's weight and diets. We conclude by drawing attention to the value of viewing food anxiety as social practice, in highlighting issues that are largely invisible in both official discourses and scholarly accounts of childhood obesity prevention

The abstract character of modern technological relations

This thesis engages with and develops theoretical frameworks and concepts for understanding the relationship between technology and social relations. I argue that technologies substantively contribute to constituting the form of the cultural and structural relations they mediate, including relationships to nature. In particular, a social theoretical framework will be developed which distinguishes more and less abstract levels of technologically mediated social relations. In Part 1, I outline a methodological framework and series of conceptual distinctions for understanding and analysing the relationships between technology and society, and for clarifying some themes and debates in the literature on the philosophy and sociology of technology. In Part 2, I consider more closely the work of four substantive theorists of technology: Marshall McLuhan, Langdon Winner, Martin Heidegger and Albert Borgmann. In Part 3, I turn to a number of case studies of the ways technologies shape the form of social relations: firstly, comparing manual, mechanical and electronic technologies (including the clock, steam engine, railway, automobile, telephone, radio, television and internet); and secondly, comparing organic, chemical and genetic forms of agricultural production and modes of engagement with nature, focusing in particular on genetic engineering and the new biotechnologies. In the Appendix, I briefly outline a framework for comparing different paradigms of scientific knowledge and practice in terms of their more or less abstract character and level of engagement with the world

Under the regulatory radar? nanotechnologies and their impacts for rural Australia

Nanotechnology is the latest platform technology to capture the imagination of the agricultural and food industries, with applications being adopted across these entire sectors. With companies such as Kraft Foods and H. J. Heinz investing heavily in nanotechnology research and development, industry commentators have suggested that the global nano-agri-food sector will, by 2010, be worth in excess of US$20 billion. While the nano-revolution is well under way, however, the entry of nanotechnologies into paddocks and onto our plates has occurred largely beneath the policy and regulatory radars. As such, agricultural inputs and food items that contain nano-materials are unlabelled, thereby preventing consumers from differentiating between nano-products and their non-nano counterparts. This situation persists, despite a mounting body of scientific evidence pointing to potential health and environmental risks associated with the manufacture of, and exposure to, nano-materials. While proponents of nanotechnology promise a range of benefits across the agri-food sector, this chapter considers the potential impact of the unfettered introduction of agriculture and food-related nanotechnologies on Australian rural communities. To date, this issue has received little recognition in the emerging debates. Our chapter contributes to these critical discussions by highlighting a range of social issues associated with the introduction of nanotechnology for rural Australia within the context of the development and application of nanotechnologies across the agri-food sector. The chapter also identifies potential human and environmental risks for these communities. We argue that a lack of nano-specific regulations could exacerbate a number of these risks

The ethics of eating

The panel discussed what does it mean to eat ethically, should we only eat locally grown, in season, GM/chemical-free produce sold at the local farmers’ market and what is the place for the industrial food complex