UAS Evening at Egan Lecture “What is Food? Eating and Mutual Aid,” September 27 with Dr. Alexis Shotwell
The “What is Food? Eating and Mutual Aid,” talk will focus on climate change in the context of personal lifestyle choices.
Juneau, Alaska
Date of Press Release: September 23, 2019
The annual fall lecture series Evening at Egan continues September 27 at the University of Alaska Southeast Auke Lake campus with a presentation by Dr. Alexis Shotwell, Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Titled “What is Food? Eating and Mutual Aid,” this talk will focus on climate change in the context of personal lifestyle choices.
“Many people are feeling despair about the state of the world right now, partially because it seems that there is so little we can individually do to change the course of climate change and other big problems,” says Dr. Shotwell, “My work helps us think about how to think better about our situation so that we can do more together to change things.”
She will share some approaches to answering questions about how things like eating, travel, shopping and consumerism can affect the potential for climate catastrophes, large-scale pollution, and ecological devastation. She will explain her views on a useful distinction between ethical decisions based on substances (what something is) and ethical decisions based on placing ourselves in relationships. She will outline the idea of political care as a form of “mutual aid,” which can help establish good relationships with the world.
Dr. Alexis Shotwell earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy-History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She also holds a Master of Arts degree in Women’s Studies from Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec.
She is in Juneau for the biennial conference of the Alaska chapter of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), taking place September 25-27. NASW is an organization that works to advance the profession and practice of social work, by shaping public policy, and advocating to enhance the well-being of individuals, families and communities while promoting social justice.
All Evening at Egan lectures are scheduled for 7 p.m. at the Egan Library and live-streamed on the UAS YouTube channel. View full schedule for the lectures series. Presentations can be watched live or recorded on the UAS YouTube channel.