PhD Research Project: Sustainable diets and state policy: balancing the promotion of sustainable di

The Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures focuses on advancing sustainability research and connecting it with the policy debate around how humans can live in a more sustainable way.
grantham.sheffield.ac.uk

We are recruiting Scholars who will combine outstanding intellect with a strong commitment to public engagement, leadership and action. These ambitious individuals will complete interdisciplinary PhD research projects to help solve the challenges of sustainability. They will be supported by the Centre through a unique training programme, designed to equip them with the skills to become policy advocates and leaders in sustainability matters.

Your application for this studentship should be accompanied by a CV and a 200 word supporting statement. Your statement should outline your aspirations and motivation for studying in the Grantham Centre, outlining any relevant experience.

Please select ’Standard PhD’ and the Department of Politics. Fill in the title of your desired project and the name(s) of the supervisors’. The starting date of the PhD will be the start of the next academic year - 1 Oct 2017. The ’Funding stage’ on the form will be ’project studentship’.

There is growing consensus that the increasing adoption of the ‘Western’ diet across the world raises serious ethical concerns. The huge expansion in the global consumption of meat, eggs and dairy has been facilitated by massive increases in intensive forms of animal production, which cause serious environmental problems, as well as other ethical concerns relating to: animal welfare, human health, food security, cultural integrity and individual livelihoods.
However, while these ethical problems are well-established, this PhD project is devoted to the more neglected political question of what can legitimately be done about them. If the spread of the Western diet is to be slowed and reversed, how might that legitimately be done, both at the domestic and international level? Fundamentally, the project asks how the promotion of ‘sustainable diets’ ought to be balanced against individual and group freedom.

This PhD is concerned with marrying debates about sustainable diets with debates relating to the legitimate scope of political action. It will do so by focusing its analysis around two broad areas of enquiry: the domestic and the international:

1. The Legitimate Scope of Domestic Dietary Policy:
a) Can the state legitimately coerce people to follow certain diets?
b) Given the social, political and imaginative investment individuals and cultures make in food, is diet something that in fact requires special protection from interference?
c) If the state cannot coerce citizens to adopt ethical consumption patterns, can it ‘nudge’ them, through taxes or other means, to improve their choices?
d) Does the state have a duty to ensure that consumers know not only where their food comes from, but also the means and consequences of the way it is produced?
e) In multicultural countries, is the state the proper authority to transform diets, or should that power be vested in more local agencies?

2. The Legitimate Scope of International Dietary Policy:
a) Are the food production and consumption practices of individual sovereign states something that external agents can legitimately interfere with?
b) Is it unjustified and hypocritical for wealthy states and their representatives to interfere with the spread of the ‘globalised diet’?

Key words:
Food ethics, political philosophy, political theory, ethics, sustainability, diet

Funding Notes

This four year studentship will be fully funded at Home/EU or international rates.

Support for travel and consumables (RTSG) will also be made available at standard rate of £2,627 per annum, with an additional one-off allowance of £1,000 for a computer in the first year. Students will receive an annual stipend of £17,336. Applications should be received and complete by Thursday 23rd February 2017.