Food, Health, and Environment

Each class will articulate a specific topic (food information and education; global food security, etc.) with key concepts of political sociology of public action: agenda-setting, social problems, controversies as well as implementation and policy instruments.

Students will be asked to be active during the course through oral presentations and class participation. The presentation consists of a critical analysis of a scientific paper. Students will work in groups of two. They will choose an article (that I select for each session) to study during the first class. They will summarize/comment/criticize the sociological “puzzle”, the methodology, the main argument(s) and results into a 10/15-minute presentation. Then, they will respond to questions of the audience.

Students will also constitute conduct a collective research survey on a specific case related to food, health and environment. To do that, they will team up in groups of 3, choose one topic on which to concentrate and work in depth. They will learn during the seminars how to conduct research (research design, literature reviews, conducting interviews…). At the end of the course, they will submit a dossier (10-15 pages) presenting their case and using the concepts introduced during the course.

Evaluation

The assessment for this course will be based on:

• Oral presentation and class participation (30%)
• Collective research survey (70%)