Neoliberal Globalization, Food Systems (Literacy) Transformation and Global Citizenship
Date
2023
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Reimagining Development Education in Africa
Abstract
This chapter discusses global citizenship as an imperative of development education, through the
lens of food literacy. At the heart of development education is a transformative approach to
pursuing human centred development by empowering people and communities through
knowledge, values, attitudes, and skills. The notion of global citizenship is, persuasively, the moral
anchor for the practice of development education. However, with the unfolding globalization
forces, some of the qualities and values sometimes become contentious due to how they are
produced, diffused and the potential negative implications about their outcomes. This leaves one
to wonder whether to learn to get empowered to give effect to development education and global
citizenship or to unlearn what is already known or is an accepted system of knowledge or values
in order to promote the practice of development education. The chapter contributes to
conceptualizing development education through global citizenship using food and nutrition
literacy by focusing on the current processes of neoliberal globalization induced food system
transformations, how the process creates unhealthy food environments and disrupts local food
system knowledge, food literacy and skills, and how the individual reacts to such processes in
terms of food and nutrition literacy, and aspirations for improved wellbeing. There is no doubt that
globalization induced food system transformations have disrupted food literacy in some respects,
principally due to availability of food in environments and cultures other than where the food was
produced. Other dynamics such as food processing and preparation technologies, new ideas and
sources of food literacy all interact to create a blurring effect of just what is useful food literacy,
and which should be unlearned in order to achieve wellbeing. The chapter spotlights the tension
between the known, locally relevant food literacy and that which is ‘imposed’ by neoliberal food
systems transformation, and how this creates dissonance and convergence about food literacy as
the individual joggles between wellbeing and being a global citizenship. The chapter argues that
the homogenizing food literacy due to the effect of neoliberal globalization is antithesis to the
concept of global citizenship as framed in development education, and concludes that the results
are loss of relevant local food literacies, creation of unhealthy food environment and exposure of
the population to poor health arising from increasing food-related non-communicable diseases
(NCDs). It is recommended that multilevel governance and regulatory strategies, structures and
frameworks be designed and implemented to counter the real and potential public health problems
arising from the food systems transformation.These include legislative regulation on food
component and nutritional information labelling, regulating ‘harmful’ food advertisement, creation
of healthy food environment, prioritizing of recruitment of caterers with local food literacies to
work in public sector as well as designing education campaigns to promote consumption of local
foods by demystifying certain false claims about processed foods
Description
Research Article
Keywords
Development education, Food security, Globalisation
Citation
Fuseini, I. (2022). Neoliberal Globalization, Food Systems (Literacy) Transformation and Global Citizenship. In: Frimpong Kwapong, O.A.T., Addae, D., Boateng, J.K. (eds) Reimagining Development Education in Africa. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96001-8_13