DSOC 1212

FWS: Precarious Work and Workers in the Global Food System

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2014-2015.

Do you ever wonder about the working conditions and daily lives of the people who produce our food? This course asks how ethnicity, legal status, gender, and age shape access to basic rights for agricultural workers across the global food system. How do migrant farmworkers cope with anti-immigrant political and social climates? What happens to children who are trafficked to produce food commodities cheaply? Does Fair Trade make a difference for indigenous peasant communities? This course will engage with documentaries, ethnographies, media reports, sociological literature, and historical fiction pieces that address the precarious social life of food. By writing film and book reviews, reading responses, op-ed pieces, and research papers, students will gain skills in close textual analysis and in developing strong arguments.

When Offered Fall, spring.

Satisfies Requirement First-Year Writing Seminar.

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