In A Mass Conspiracy to Feed People, David Boarder Giles explores the ways in which capitalism simultaneously manufactures waste and scarcity. Illustrating how communities of marginalized people and discarded things gather and cultivate political possibilities, Giles documents the work of Food Not Bombs (FNB), a global movement of grassroots soup kitchens that recover wasted grocery surpluses and redistribute them to those in need. He explores FNB's urban contexts: the global cities in which late-capitalist economies and unsustainable consumption precipitate excess, inequality, food waste, and hunger. Beginning in urban dumpsters, Giles traces the logic by which perfectly edible commodities are nonetheless thrown out—an act that manufactures food scarcity—to the social order of “world-class” cities, the pathways of discarded food as it circulates through the FNB kitchen, and the anticapitalist political movements the kitchen represents. Describing the mutual entanglement of global capitalism and anticapitalist transgression, Giles captures those emergent forms of generosity, solidarity, and resistance that spring from the global city's marginalized residents.

On a fragile planet with spreading food insecurity, food waste is a political and ethical problem. Examining the collaborative, sometimes scrappy institutional and community efforts to recuperate and redistribute food waste in Brussels, Belgium, Kelly Alexander reveals it is also an opportunity for new forms of sociality. Her study plays out across a diverse set of locations—including a food bank with ties to the EU, a social restaurant serving low-cost meals made from supermarket surplus by an emergent immigrant labor force, and a social inclusion program in an urban market with a "zero food waste" pop-up cafe. Alexander argues that these efforts, in concert with innovative policy, effectively recirculate wasted food to new publics and produce what she terms a "spectrum of edibility." According to Alexander, these models face challenges—including reproducing the very power dynamics across race, class, and citizenship status they seek to circumvent. They also mirror the challenges of the everyday operations of the European social welfare state, which is increasingly reliant on NGOs to meet provisioning promises. Yet she finds that they also move the needle forward to reduce food waste across one city, providing an example for major urban centers around the world.

Introducing Human Geographies is a ‘travel guide’ into the academic subject of human geography and the things that it studies. The coverage of the new edition has been thoroughly refreshed to reflect and engage with the contemporary nature and direction of human geography. This updated and much extended fourth edition includes a diverse range of authors and topics from across the globe, with a completely revised set of contributions reflecting contemporary concerns in human geography. Presented in four parts with a streamlined structure, it includes over 70 contributions written by expert international researchers addressing the central ideas through which human geographers understand and shape their subject. It maps out the big, foundational ideas that have shaped the discipline past and present; explores key research themes being pursued in human geography’s various sub-disciplines; and identifies emerging collaborations between human geography and other disciplines in the areas of technology, justice and environment. This comprehensive, stimulating and cutting-edge introduction to the field is richly illustrated throughout with full colour figures, maps and photos. The book is designed especially for students new to university degree courses in human geography across the world, and is an essential reference for undergraduate students on courses related to society, place, culture and space.

Culinary Man and the Kitchen Brigade offers an exploration of the field of normative subjectivity circulated within western fine dining traditions, presenting a theoretical analysis of the governing relationship between the chef, who embodies the Culinary Man, and the fine dining brigade. The book offers a unique treatment of western haute cuisine’s interlocking regime of labor and aesthetics and theorizes the underexplored kitchen brigade as a model of disciplinary formation. It deploys a heterogeneous set of disciplinary discourses and practices which have the effect of consolidating monopolies on epistemic authority and governance. Each position within the brigade’s hierarchy is subject to distinct, though related, disciplinary practices. Thus, chapters identify the specific practices pertinent to each brigade subject, while also illuminating how they fit together as a coherent hegemonic project. The application of Wynterian and Foucauldian insight to the fine dining brigade offers a political theory of culinary work which departs from other food studies texts. Notably, this work offers an in-depth treatment of the brigade’s colonial dimensions which resonate with emerging critiques, scholarly and general, of the race and gender politics of restaurant labor. The concluding chapters seek to identify where extant modes of resistance or alternative forms of culinary organization may hold the potential to move beyond the hegemonic overrepresentation of Culinary Man. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars from across the social sciences and humanities interested in critical food studies, political and cultural theory, and popular culinary culture.

Poverty is a complex global challenge rooted in intertwined social, economic and political factors, which excludes people from participating fully in normalised social and market-based activities. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated poverty-related issues such as food insecurity, and growing numbers of people are having to rely on welfare assistance. This pandemic, coupled with austerity measures implemented across many European countries over the past years, has impacted negatively on towns, cities, regions and countries, leaving places and communities depleted. This edited volume curates a collection of relevant research addressing the challenges of poverty and the political-economic measures that perpetuate it. It adopts a cross-disciplinary approach to covering relevant theories, methodologies and policy-oriented research, highlighting the interlinkages between poverty and austerity that have resulted since the 2008 financial crisis. In particular, the book focuses on food insecurity as one of the most extreme manifestations of poverty but also addresses interconnected issues such as unemployment, homelessness and poor health. The contributors primarily utilise diverse qualitative methods that give voice to lived experiences of poverty while also considering quantitative approaches that are essential for measuring food insecurity and modelling the impacts of austerity. The book will be of significant interest to anyone researching poverty and austerity with an interest in social policy, human and cultural geography, marketing and consumer culture, economic policy, public health and sustainability.

This comprehensive handbook represents a definitive state of the current art and science of food waste from multiple perspectives. The issue of food waste has emerged in recent years as a major global problem. Recent research has enabled greater understanding and measurement of loss and waste throughout food supply chains, shedding light on contributing factors and practical solutions. This book includes perspectives and disciplines ranging from agriculture, food science, industrial ecology, history, economics, consumer behaviour, geography, theology, planning, sociology, and environmental policy among others. The Routledge Handbook of Food Waste addresses new and ongoing debates around systemic causes and solutions, including behaviour change, social innovation, new technologies, spirituality, redistribution, animal feed, and activism. The chapters describe and evaluate country case studies, waste management, treatment, prevention, and reduction approaches, and compares research methodologies for better understanding food wastage. This book is essential reading for the growing number of food waste scholars, practitioners, and policy makers interested in researching, theorising, debating, and solving the multifaceted phenomenon of food waste.