The world of development thinkers and practitioners is abuzz with a new lexicon: the idea of "the nexus" between water, food, and energy which is intuitively compelling. It promises better integration of multiple sectoral elements, a better transition to greener economies, and sustainable development. However, there appears to be little agreement on its precise meaning, whether it only complements existing environmental governance approaches or how it can be enhanced in national contexts. One current approach to the nexus treats it as a risk and security matter while another treats it within economic rationality addressing externalities across sector. A third perspective acknowledges it as a fundamentally political process requiring negotiation amongst different actors with distinct perceptions, interests, and practices. This perspective highlights the fact that technical solutions for improving coherence within the nexus may have unintended and negative impacts in other policy areas, such as poverty alleviation and education. The Water–Food–Energy Nexus: Power, Politics and Justice lays out the managerial-technical definitions of the nexus and challenges these conceptions by bringing to the forefront the politics of the nexus, around two key dimensions – a dynamic understanding of water–food–energy systems, and a normative positioning around nexus debates, in particular around social justice. The authors argue that a shift in nexus governance is required towards approaches where limits to control are acknowledged, and more reflexive/plural strategies adopted. This book will be of interest to academic researchers, policy makers, and practitioners in the fields of international development studies, environmental politics, and science and technology studies, as well as international relations.

The world of development thinkers and practitioners is abuzz with a new lexicon: the idea of "the nexus" between water, food, and energy which is intuitively compelling. It promises better integration of multiple sectoral elements, a better transition to greener economies, and sustainable development. However, there appears to be little agreement on its precise meaning, whether it only complements existing environmental governance approaches or how it can be enhanced in national contexts. One current approach to the nexus treats it as a risk and security matter while another treats it within economic rationality addressing externalities across sector. A third perspective acknowledges it as a fundamentally political process requiring negotiation amongst different actors with distinct perceptions, interests, and practices. This perspective highlights the fact that technical solutions for improving coherence within the nexus may have unintended and negative impacts in other policy areas, such as poverty alleviation and education. The Water–Food–Energy Nexus: Power, Politics and Justice lays out the managerial-technical definitions of the nexus and challenges these conceptions by bringing to the forefront the politics of the nexus, around two key dimensions – a dynamic understanding of water–food–energy systems, and a normative positioning around nexus debates, in particular around social justice. The authors argue that a shift in nexus governance is required towards approaches where limits to control are acknowledged, and more reflexive/plural strategies adopted. This book will be of interest to academic researchers, policy makers, and practitioners in the fields of international development studies, environmental politics, and science and technology studies, as well as international relations.

The Water-Food-Energy Nexus: Power, Politics and Justice lays out the managerial-technical definitions of the water, food and energy nexus and challenges these conceptions by bringing to the forefront the politics of the nexus.

This book unearths a food story buried deep within the soil of American civil rights history. Drawing on archival research, interviews, and oral histories, Bobby J. Smith II re-examines the Mississippi civil rights movement as a period when activists expanded the meaning of civil rights to address food as integral to sociopolitical and economic conditions. For decades, white economic and political actors used food as a weapon against Black sharecropping communities in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, but members of these communities collaborated with activists to transform food into a tool of resistance. Today, Black youth are building a food justice movement in the Delta to continue this story, grappling with inequalities that continue to shape their lives. Drawing on multiple disciplines including critical food studies, Black studies, history, sociology, and southern studies, Smith makes critical connections between civil rights activism and present-day food justice activism in Black communities, revealing how power struggles over food empower them to envision Black food futures in which communities have the full autonomy and capacity to imagine, design, create, and sustain a self-sufficient local food system.

We all witness, in advertising and on supermarket shelves, the fierce competition for our food dollars. In this engrossing exposé, Marion Nestle goes behind the scenes to reveal how the competition really works and how it affects our health. The abundance of food in the United States--enough calories to meet the needs of every man, woman, and child twice over--has a downside. Our over-efficient food industry must do everything possible to persuade people to eat more--more food, more often, and in larger portions--no matter what it does to waistlines or well-being. Like manufacturing cigarettes or building weapons, making food is big business. Food companies in 2000 generated nearly $900 billion in sales. They have stakeholders to please, shareholders to satisfy, and government regulations to deal with. It is nevertheless shocking to learn precisely how food companies lobby officials, co-opt experts, and expand sales by marketing to children, members of minority groups, and people in developing countries. We learn that the food industry plays politics as well as or better than other industries, not least because so much of its activity takes place outside the public view. Editor of the 1988 Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health, Nestle is uniquely qualified to lead us through the maze of food industry interests and influences. She vividly illustrates food politics in action: watered-down government dietary advice, schools pushing soft drinks, diet supplements promoted as if they were First Amendment rights. When it comes to the mass production and consumption of food, strategic decisions are driven by economics--not science, not common sense, and certainly not health. No wonder most of us are thoroughly confused about what to eat to stay healthy. An accessible and balanced account, Food Politics will forever change the way we respond to food industry marketing practices. By explaining how much the food industry influences government nutrition policies and how cleverly it links its interests to those of nutrition experts, this path-breaking book helps us understand more clearly than ever before what we eat and why.

As awareness of the commodification of food for profit at the expense of our health and the planet grows, this book foregrounds the communicative dimensions of resistance by food movements. Voice and participation are argued by the author to be the means through which rural and urban communities can, and in many cases do, resist the capture of value by corporate actors and work to democratise their foodscapes. Her critical analysis of meaning-making under neo-liberalism suggests that agroecology, as a socially activating form of agriculture within a food sovereignty framework, provides an example of social learning relevant across rural/urban and North/South divides. Embracing indigenous knowledge, gender equity and postcolonial theory, this approach mobilises growers and eaters to contest the power structures that shape their food environments, and also to focus on social and economic justice within their communities, particularly in the context of climate change. Participatory ecologies that incorporate these forms of social learning encourage the co-creation of inclusive foodscapes and politicise food justice. Such a positive framing of resistance through horizontal pedagogy, participation, communication and social learning processes contrasts with the vertical dissemination structure of the corporatised food regime and takes vital steps towards a more democratic food system. Voice and Participation in Global Food Politics will be of interest to scholars of agri-food, transdisciplinary food studies and political economy of food systems. It will also be of relevance to NGOs and policymakers.

Artists, anthropologists, activists, and others consider the global politics and ethics of food production, distribution, and consumption. The last decade has witnessed a proliferation of artists and artist collectives interrogating the global politics and ethics of food production, distribution, and consumption. As an important document of new research and thinking around the subject, this book, copublished with Delfina Foundation, offers reflections on food by prominent artists, anthropologists, and activists, among others. In interviews, chefs, policy makers, and agronomists critically assess and illuminate the ways the arts confront food-related issues, ranging from the infrastructure of global and local food systems, its impact on social organization, alternatives and sustainability, climate and ecology, health and policy, science and biodiversity, and identity and community. With texts by Harry G. West, Raj Patel, and Tim Lang Conversations with Ferran Adrià and Marta Arzak, Tamara Ben-Ari and Asunción Molinos Gordo, Mark Hix and Patrick Holden, Michel Pimbert and Tomás Uhnák, Michael Vazquez and Michael Rakowitz Contributions from Kathrin Böhm, Center for Genomic Gastronomy, Leone Contini, Cooking Sections, Chris Fite-Wassilak, Amy Franceschini and Michael Taussig, Fernando García-Dory, Melanie Jackson, Dagna Jakubowska, Nick Laessing, Jane Levi; Poppy Litchfield, Candice Lin, Christine Mackey, Taus Makhacheva, Elia Nurvista, Senam Okudzeto, Thomas Pausz, Daniel Salomon, Vivien Sansour, Standart Thinking, Serkan Taycan, Lantian Xie, Raed Yassin Copublished by Delfina Foundation and Sternberg Press