Jennifer Szende, chercheure postdoctorale, présente ses travaux de recherche à l’occasion d’un midi de l’éthique.

Abstract:

This paper employs the example of injustice in food distribution to examine Young’s critique of the distributive paradigm. Young argues that many theories of justice inflate the significance of distribution, and thereby misunderstand the central role played by social processes of oppression and domination. The concept of a ‘food desert’ is defined by a relative lack of access to nutritious food in a geographically defined area, and moreover by a population’s related deprivation and lack of access to nutritious food. A food desert is thus a distributive concept. But food deserts are also characterized as oppressive outcomes of social processes of domination and oppression. Hence, they simultaneously represent an example of both the distributive paradigm, and an expanded definition of injustice as argued for by Young. This paper examines the example of food deserts in light of Young’s critique of the distributive paradigm, and finds the example instructive.