Food Regimes re-examines the agrarian question historically and its present-day implications, introducing regional interpretations of the food regime, incorporating gender, labour, financial, ecological and nutritional dimensions into the analysis.

Food Regimes re-examines the agrarian question historically and its present-day implications, introducing regional interpretations of the food regime, incorporating gender, labour, financial, ecological and nutritional dimensions into the analysis.

Food Regimes and Agrarian Questions extends the original conception of the food regime, formulated by Harriet Friedmann and Philip McMichael, detailing new dimensions of the succession of imperial, intensive and corporate food regimes. Developing the methodological contributions of food regime analysis, McMichael re-examines the agrarian question historically and its present-day implications, introduces regional interpretations of the food regime and incorporates gender, labour, financial, ecological and nutritional dimensions into his analysis. Finally, McMichael explores the relationships between contemporary food, energy, climate and financial crises and food regime restructuring, which includes agrofuels, land grabbing, the bioeconomy, agro-security mercantilism and the food sovereignty movement.

Food Regimes and Agrarian Questions extends the original conception of the food regime, formulated by Harriet Friedmann and Philip McMichael, detailing new dimensions of the succession of imperial, intensive and corporate food regimes. Developing the methodological contributions of food regime analysis, McMichael re-examines the agrarian question historically and its present-day implications. He introduces regional interpretations of the food regime, incorporating gender, labour, financial, ecological and nutritional dimensions into his analysis. Finally, McMichael explores the relationships between contemporary food, energy, climate and financial crises and food regime restructuring, which includes such topics as agrofuels, land grabbing, the bioeconomy, agro-security mercantilism and the food sovereignty movement.

This book asks how we are to understand the relationship between capitalism and the environment, capitalism and food, and capitalism and social resistance. These questions come together to form a study of food regimes and the means by which capitalism organises both the environment and people to provision its distinctive system of ever-expanding consumption with food. Political Ecology, Food Regimes, and Food Sovereignty explores whether there are environmental limits to capitalism and its economic growth by addressing the ongoing and inter-linked crises of food, fossil fuels, and finance. It also considers its political limits, as the globally burgeoning ‘precariat’, peasants and indigenous people resist the further commodification of their livelihoods. This book draws from the field of Political Ecology to approach new ways of analysing capitalism, the environment and resistance, and also to propose new solutions to the current agro-ecological-economic crisis. It will be of particular interest to students and academics of Environmental Sociology, Human Geography, and Environmental Geography.

Henry Bernstein argues that class dynamics should be the starting point of any analysis of agrarian change. Providing an accessible introduction to agrarian political economy, he shows clearly how the argument for "bringing class back in" provides an alternative to inherited conceptions of the agrarian question. He also ably illustrates what is at stake in different ways of thinking about class dynamics and the effects of agrarian change in today's globalized world. CONTENTS: Introduction: The Political Economy of Agrarian Change. Production and Productivity. Origins of Early Development of Capitalism. Colonialism and Capitalism. Farming and Agriculture, Local and Global. Neoliberal Globalization and World Agriculture. Capitalist Agriculture and Non-Capitalist Farmers? Class Formation in the Countryside. Complexities of Class.

‘Food Insecurity and Revolution in the Middle East and North Africa’ studies the political economy of agrarian transformation in the eponymous regions. Examining Egypt and Tunisia in detail as case studies, it critiques the dominant tropes of food security offered by the international financial institutions and promotes the importance of small-scale family farming in developing sustainable food sovereignty. Egypt and Tunisia are located in the context of the broader Middle East and broader processes of war, environmental transformation and economic reform. The book contributes to uncovering the historical backdrop and contemporary pressures in the Middle East and North Africa for the uprisings of 2010 and 2011. It also explores the continued failure of post-uprising counter-revolutionary governments to directly address issues of rural development that put the position and role of small farmers centre stage.