Bringing The Food Economy Home

Norberg-Hodge, Todd Merrifield, and Steven Gorelick of the International Society for Ecology and Culture discuss how a shift towards local food economies would protect and rebuild the agricultural diversity that has been lost in the current specialized, capital intensive, technology-based global environment. Coverage includes the history of this change in emphasis from local to global; the ecology of food marketing and production; food and health, the economy, and the community; food security; and changing direction. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Many natural scientists believe climate change will bring civilizational collapse. Tim Gorringe argues that behind this threat is a commitment to false values, embodied in our political, economic, and farming systems. At the same time, millions of people the world over--perhaps the majority--are committed to alternative values and practices. This book explores how these values, already foreshadowed in people's movements all over the world, can produce different political and economic realities which can underwrite a safe and prosperous future for all.

Cuba in a Global Context examines the unlikely prominence of the island nation's geopolitical role. The contributors to this volume explore the myriad ways in which Cuba has not only maintained but often increased its reach and influence in Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. From the beginning, the Castro regime established a foreign policy that would legitimize the revolutionary government, if not in the eyes of the United States at least in the eyes of other global actors. The essays in this volume shed new light on Cuban diplomacy with communist China as well as with Western governments such as Great Britain and Canada. In recent years, Cubans have improved their lives in the face of the ongoing U.S. embargo. The promotion of increased economic and political cooperation between Cuba and Venezuela served as a catalyst for the Petrocaribe group. Links established with countries in the Caribbean and Central America have increased tourism, medical diplomacy, and food sovereignty across the region. Cuban transnationalism has also succeeded in creating people-to-people contacts involving those who have remained on the island and members of the Cuban diaspora. While the specifics of Cuba's international relations are likely to change as new leaders take over, the role of Cubans working to assert their sovereignty has undoubtedly impacted every corner of the globe.

With her new book, Italian Food Activism in Urban Sardinia, cultural anthropologist Carole Counihan makes a significant contribution to understanding the growing global movement for food democracy. Providing a detailed ethnographic case study from Cagliari, the capital of the Italian island-region of Sardinia, she draws upon Sardinians' own descriptions of their actions and motivations to change their food as they pursue grassroots alternatives to the agro-industrial food system through GAS (Gruppi di Acquisito Solidale or solidarity-based purchase groups), organic and urban agriculture, alternative restaurants, and farm-to-school programs. They link their activism to the sensory and emotional resonance of food and its nostalgic connections to place, tradition, and culture. They stress the importance of education through experience, and they build relationships and networks through workshops, farm visits, and commensality. The book focuses on three key themes to emerge in interviews with Cagliari food activists: the significance of territorio (or place), the importance of taste, and the role of education. By exploring these areas of concern, Counihan uncovers key tensions in consumption as a force for change, in individual vs. group actions, and in political and economic power relations, which are of crucial importance to wider global efforts to promote food democracy.

There has been growing attention paid to urban agriculture worldwide because of its role in making cities more environmentaly sustainable while also contributing to enhanced food access and social justice. This edited volume brings together current research and case studies concerning urban agriculture from both the Global North and the Global South. Its objective is to help bridge the long-standing divide between discussion of urban agriculture in the Global North and the Global South and to demonstrate that today there are greater areas of overlap than there are differences both theoretically and substantively, and that research in either area can help inform research in the other. The book covers the nature of urban agriculture and how it supports livelihoods, provides ecosystem services, and community development. It also considers urban agriculture and social capital, networks, and agro-biodiversity conservation. Concepts such as sustainability, resilience, adaptation and community, and the value of urban agriculture as a recreational resource are explored. It also examines, quite fundamentally, why people farm in the city and how urban agriculture can contribute to more sustainable cities in both the Global North and the Global South.

At a time when the relationship between 'the country' and 'the city' is in flux worldwide, the value and meanings of food associated with both places continue to be debated. Building upon the foundation of Raymond Williams' classic work, The Country and the City, this volume examines how conceptions of the country and the city invoked in relation to food not only reflect their changing relationship but have also been used to alter the very dynamics through which countryside and cities, and the food grown and eaten within them, are produced and sustained. Leading scholars in the study of food offer ethnographic studies of peasant homesteads, family farms, community gardens, state food industries, transnational supermarkets, planning offices, tourist boards, and government ministries in locales across the globe. This fascinating collection provides vital new insight into the contested dynamics of food and will be key reading for upper-level students and scholars of food studies, anthropology, history and geography.

This title is aimed at those of us who feel instinctively that there is something badly wrong with our global system of trade and finance, where money for its own sake is valued over jobs and people's lives, but don't know how to start suggesting alternatives.

The ideology of human rights protection has gained considerable momentum during the second half of the twentieth century at both national and international level and appears to be an effective lever for bringing about legal change. This book analyzes this strategy in economic and commercial policy and considers the transportation of the 'public law' discourse of basic human rights protection into the 'commercial law' context of economic policy, business activity and corporate behaviour. The volume will prove indispensable for anyone interested in human rights, international law, and business and commercial law.