"Alimentare" il rispetto. Politiche alimentari e istanze minoritarie in società multiculturali
ProjectIn multicultural democratic societies, legal theory and practice operate under the constraints imposed by the commitment to the uniformity of legal norms (at different levels), on the one hand, and that to the accommodation of minority claims, on the other. The aspiration to realise jointly such two commitments is affirmed in a number of legal provisions in national and international legislation and is grounded in article 3 of the Italian Constitution, which reads: “All citizens have equal social dignity and are equal before the law, without distinction of sex, race, language, religion, political opinion, personal and social conditions”.
The joint realisation of such two commitments has been investigated by legal theorists and practitioners in relation to issues echoed in the media in virtue of their immediate political significance (such as the debate on the Islamic veil) as well as to those on the impact of multiculturalism on certain judicial areas (such as that related to the appropriate responses criminal codes should give to the so-called culturally motivated crimes). Outside such areas, however, one should note a rather puzzling lack of interest in the legal academic debate on how to best accommodate a plurality of requests for differential treatment grounded in different, culturally dependent dietary habits and on the conflicts to which they might give origin.
Yet it is almost a platitude to observe that respect for persons must be realised also through respecting their dietary habits. As is well-known, food is not only a condition for the material survival of individuals, but its ways of consumption are frequently regarded as forms of symbolic and cultural expression through which, on the one hand, persons live by their traditions and form their identities and, on the other hand, they exercise their autonomy and express themselves. From this point of view, it is hard to deny that dietary habits are of utmost importance for the society as a whole and, more specifically, for the study and production of legal rules.
Such an importance notwithstanding, philosophers of law and in general legal theorists have shown very little interest in issues of dietary pluralism. This lack of interest is particularly surprising on consideration of the present situation in many liberal democratic societies, characterised as they are by the presence of persons putting forward claims for being allowed to live in compliance with their diverse culturally or religiously derived dietary habits. To make up for such a lacuna, the research carried out by the Milano unit is committed to offering an analytically compelling and normatively plausible account of the intersection between the conceptual domains of dietary pluralism, multiculturalism and the law.
To be true, some studies have been devoted to the regulation of such specific cases as that of animal ritual slaughtering. And some contributions in this literature have tried to link this issue with the more general issues of freedom of religion and its exercise. The attention for the issue of animal slaughtering can be traced back to the individual initiatives of the Italian legislator regarding animal welfare, which have recently found support in European legislation (see the Decree dated 1st September 1998 on the Enactment of the European Council directive 93/119 on the protection of animals at the time of slaughter or killing). Therefore, it does not seem to be accurate to say that both the legal system and legal theorists are at ground zero and unaware of these themes.
This said, no specific attention has so far been devoted to the general problem of dietary pluralism, whose significance emerges quite clearly from the joint consideration of the following factors: first, there has been a growing impact of cultural differences due to the increased number of migrants from “other cultures”; second, we cannot but acknowledge a radical change in the social and economic context which has brought a growing number of people to eat in public or semi-public places, in particular during working break times. In brief, a growing number of persons alien to the local dominant dietary culture end up eating their meals outside their homes, where they could easily continue to reproduce their dietary identity as it were, but find themselves eating their meals in public places such as canteens at their workplace or in schools.
Against this changing social background, it seems urgent to devise legal instruments capable of providing diverse and adequate types of dietary options that could be respectful of various cultural and religious habits. For example, it seems important to provide alternatives to food certain people refuse to eat on religious grounds, such as pork for Muslims, beef for Hindu, meat tout court for Catholics on Friday, non-kosher food for Jews. But, is dietary pluralism a publicly acceptable and feasible objective? If so, what are its limits and costs? And, finally, if accepted, what legal provisions could realise it?
The Milano research unit shall address such questions through research articulated in the following three phases.
The first phase, the research activities within which will be carried out in cooperation with the other research units and covering the first ten months of the project, will deal with issues of conceptual clarification of the notions at stake. The concept of dietary pluralism will be analysed, and such a notion will be put in relation with the ideals of respect and toleration. All conceptual issues relying on dietary pluralism will be singled out, whereas non relevant issues will be set apart. The outcome of this phase will be an article on the relation between liberal neutrality and dietary pluralism.
The second phase, from the tenth to the twenty-fourth month of the project, will contextualise the issues revolving around dietary pluralism within the wider issue of multiculturalism. Research activities will be aimed to establish whether someone’s diet is only one of the possible areas of application of multiculturalism in contemporary liberal and democratic societies, or whether it is a specific domain having a philosophical and legal autonomy, that is not reducible to an application of the more general dynamics between “us” and “them”. The main outcome of this phase will be an article attempting to answer to all these questions.
The third phase, covering the last year of the project, will outline a legal model capable of providing a justifiable and effectively peaceful coexistence between diverse dietary options. From this perspective, two main problems may be anticipated: first, it will be questioned whether certain acts, that are currently unlawful, may be legalised on cultural grounds and, accordingly, it will be explored which possible legal procedures could recognise such provisions as “cultural exemptions”; secondly, it will be necessary to temperate (on an economic, social and cultural level) different demands raised by dietary plurality in keeping with the principles of legal liberalism. The final outcome of this phase will be collected by the research unit of Milano in two books: the first book, written by the unit coordinator, will deal with the conceptual relations between the ideals of neutrality and respect; the second, written by the junior research fellow specifically appointed for this project, will address more specific issues of dietary pluralism and multiculturalism.
The underlying idea cutting across the three phases consists in a reconstruction of the different facets of the notion of liberal neutrality, on which the Milano unit coordinator, Dr. Corrado Del Bò, has been working for a long time and whose relevance and tenability Dr. Del Bò should like to apply also to the field of dietary pluralism. A conceptual analysis of the idea of liberal neutrality will be proposed with a view to see whether and how this idea could be defended from a normative point of view, so as to assess whether and to what extent it can provide a fruitful solution to the problems of dietary pluralism outlined above.
The Section of Philosophy and Sociology of Law, of the Department of Law, at the University of Milano seems to be the most adequate environment to carry out this part of the research project, both in terms of its structure and in terms of the expertise of the researchers working there. Regarding this, in particular, such an environment seems capable of providing a double advantage: on the one hand, there exists a strong tradition of analysis of legal concepts capable of offering occasions of both stimulating and rigorous intellectual feedback on the research carried out of the present project. On the other hand, the Section is characterised by a substantial presence of researchers in sociology of law. Cooperation with these researchers, whose terms will be discussed in due course, will be particularly useful in the second phase of the project.
The appointment of a junior research fellow (assegnista di ricerca) on project’s funds will be crucial to pursue the following aim: to link together conceptual and normative analyses, thus favouring a fruitful exchange between the two thematic areas.