Frances Moore Lappé

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Frances Moore Lappé
Lappé in 2008
Lappé in 2008
BornFrances Moore
(1944-02-10) February 10, 1944 (age 80)
Pendleton, Oregon, U.S.
OccupationWriter, activist, speaker
SubjectSocial change, living democracy
Notable worksDiet for a Small Planet
Notable awardsRight Livelihood Award, Rachel Carson Award, Women's National Book Association, James Beard Humanitarian of the Year, twenty honorary doctorates
PartnerRichard R. Rowe
Website
www.smallplanet.org

Frances Moore Lappé (born February 10, 1944) is an American researcher and author in the field of food and democracy policy. She is the author of 20 books including the 2.5-million-copy selling 1971 book

the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History describes as "one of the most influential political tracts of the times." She has co-founded three organizations that explore the roots of hunger, poverty, and environmental crises, as well as solutions emerging worldwide through what she calls "living democracy". Her latest work is a report entitled Crisis of Trust: How Can Democracies Protect Against Dangerous Lies? with Max Boland and Rachel Madison. Recent books by Lappé include Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want, co-authored with Adam Eichen, and It’s Not Too Late: Crisis, Opportunity, and the Power of Hope. In 1987, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award
for "revealing the political and economic causes of world hunger and how citizens can help to remedy them."

Early life

Lappé was born in 1944 in

University of California at Berkeley
for graduate studies in social work.

Career

Political, nutritional and environmental research

Throughout her works Lappé has argued that world hunger is caused not by the lack of food but rather by the inability of hungry people to gain access to the abundance of food that exists in the world and/or food-producing resources because they are simply too poor. She has posited that our current "thin democracy" creates a maldistribution of power and resources that inevitably creates waste and an artificial scarcity of the essentials for sustainable living.

Lappé makes the argument that what she calls "living democracy", i.e., democracy understood as a way of life, is not merely a structure of government. The three conditions essential for democracy, she writes in Daring Democracy and elsewhere, are the wide dispersion of power, transparency in public affairs, and a culture of mutual accountability, not blaming. These three conditions enable humans to experience a sense of agency, meaning, and connection, which she describes as the essence of human dignity. Democracy is not only what we do in the voting booth but involves our daily choices of what we buy and how we live. She believes that only by "living democracy" can we effectively solve today's social and environmental crises.

Lappé began her writing career early in life. She first gained prominence in the early 1970s with the publication of her book Diet for a Small Planet, which has sold 2.5 million copies.

In 1975, with Joseph Collins, she launched the California-based Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First) to educate Americans about the causes of world hunger. In 1990, Lappé co-founded the Center for Living Democracy, a nine-year initiative to accelerate the spread of democratic innovations in which regular citizens contribute to problem-solving. She served as founding editor of the center's American News Service (1995–2000), which placed stories of citizen problem-solving in nearly half the nation's largest newspapers.

In 2002, Lappé and her daughter Anna established the Small Planet Institute based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a collaborative network for research and popular education to bring democracy to life. With her daughter, she traveled the world and wrote Hope's Edge. The two also co-founded the Small Planet Fund,[1] channeling resources to democratic social movements worldwide.

In 2006 she was chosen as a founding councilor of the Hamburg-based

Corporate Accountability International's Value the Meal campaign.[2]
Lappé is a Contributing Editor to YES! Magazine.

Teaching positions

Lappé has also held various teaching and scholarly positions:

  • From 1984 to 1985, she was a visiting scholar at the Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of California, Berkeley.
  • From 2000 to 2001, she was a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
  • In 2003, she taught with
    Navdanya
    researching and agricultural demonstration center.
  • In 2004, she taught a course on "living democracy" at Schumacher College in England.
  • In 2006 and 2008, she was a visiting professor at Suffolk University in Boston.[3]
  • In 2013–2014, she was the Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Fellow in Environmental Studies at Colby College in Maine.[4]
  • In 2021, Frances was Indiana University's Patten Lecturer.

Recognition

Historian

Barbara Ward, Dorothy Day
– who took it upon themselves to pump life into basic truths. Frances Moore Lappé is among them."

Gourmet Magazine named Lappé among 25 people (including Thomas Jefferson, Upton Sinclair, and Julia Child), whose work has changed the way America eats. Diet for a Small Planet was selected as one of 75 Books by Women Whose Words Have Changed the World by members of the Women's National Book Association
in observance of its 75th anniversary.

Lappé has received 20 honorary doctorates from distinguished institutions, including the

National Nutritional Foods Association
. She was selected as one of twelve living "women whose words have changed the world" by the Women's National Book Association.

Family

Lappé's son, Anthony, is a

the History Channel
. Her daughter, Anna, who lives in Berkeley, California, is the author of Grub and Diet for a Hot Planet. She is the executive director of Global Alliance for the Future of Food.

Writings

Frances Moore Lappé's works have been translated into 15 languages, the most recent of which is a Chinese publication of Hope's Edge.[5]

  • Diet for a Small Planet, Ballantine Books, 1971, 1975, 1982, 1991, 2021.
  • Great Meatless Meals (with Ellen Buchman Ewald), Ballantine Books, 1974, 1976, 1981, 1985.
  • Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity (co-authored by Joseph Collins, collaboration with Cary Fowler), Houghton Mifflin, 1977, Ballantine Books, 1979.
  • Mozambique and Tanzania: Asking the Big Questions (with Adele Beccar-Varela), Institute for Food and Development Policy, 1980.
  • Aid as Obstacle (with Joseph Collins and David Kinley), Food First, 1980.
  • Now We Can Speak (with Joseph Collins), Food First, 1982.
  • What To Do After You Turn Off the T.V., Ballantine Books, 1985.
  • World Hunger: Twelve Myths (with Joseph Collins), Grove Press, 1986, 1998.
  • Betraying the National Interest (with Rachel Schurman and Kevin Danaher), Food First, 1987.
  • Rediscovering America's Values, Ballantine Books, 1989.
  • Taking Population Seriously (with Rachel Schurman), Food First, 1990.
  • The Quickening of America: Rebuilding Our Nation, Remaking Our Lives (with Paul Martin Du Bois), Jossey-Bass, 1994.
  • Hope’s Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet (with Anna Lappé), Tarcher/Penguin, 2002.
  • You Have the Power: Choosing Courage in a Culture of Fear (with Jeffrey Perkins), Tarcher/Penguin, 2004.
  • Democracy's Edge: Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life, Jossey-Bass, 2005.
  • Getting A Grip: Clarity, Creativity and Courage in a World Gone Mad, Small Planet Media, 2007, 2010.
  • EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think to Create the World We Want, Small Planet Media, 2011.
  • World Hunger: Ten Myths (with Joseph Collins), Grove Press, 2015.
  • Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want (co-authored by Adam Eichen), Beacon Press, 2017.
  • It’s Not Too Late: Crisis, Opportunity, and the Power of Hope, Small Planet Institute, 2021.
  • Crisis of Trust: How Can Democracies Protect Against Dangerous Lies? (with Max Boland and Rachel Madison), Small Planet Institute, 2023.

References

  1. ^ "Small Planet Fund".
  2. ^ "Value the Meal Advisory Board". Archived from the original on April 6, 2010. Retrieved December 31, 2009.
  3. ^ Frances Moore Lappé, Small Planet Institute
  4. ^ "Frances Moore Lappé".
  5. ^ New Chinese Publication Promotes Global Outreach of Ideas, Small Planet Institute (February 2011)

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