The Value of Social Science in Food Systems Research
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The social sciences are too often treated as tangential, providing a background to biomedical studies, or for translating results from clinical trials for wider audiences. This can leave research prone to reifying individuals, overlooking commercial and social determinants of health, and reinforcing dominant economic and political systems.
Given a more essential role to this research, social sciences respond to WHO call for using systems thinking and qualitative research in addressing preventive health problems and solutions. This involves understanding the social, economic, and commercial contexts, and the lived realities of health, food and nutrition. This can fundamentally reshape the research itself – the questions asked, methodologies used, the voices included, the knowledge valued – with significant implications for policy and practice.
In this talk, post-doctoral research fellow Dr Juliet Bennett shares insights on the interdisciplinary collaboration and qualitative findings from a 2-year STEM-Social Science program on The Social Life of Food and Nourishment. Juliet asks: What is the role of the social sciences in food systems research? How might it support shifts from ‘harm by design’ to ‘health by design’?
Dr Juliet Bennett is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies and the Charles Perkins Centre, at The University of Sydney, applying critical social theory to systems and practices of food production and consumption. Her book Reimagining Peace through Process Philosophy lays out an integrative approach to address global inequality and climate change. By drawing connections across scales and subjects, Juliet hopes to contribute to improving public and planetary wellbeing.