Anthropocentric thinking produces fractured ecological perspectives that can perpetuate destructive, wasteful behaviours. Learning to recognise the entangled nature of our everyday relationships with food can encourage ethical ecological thinking and lay the foundations for more sustainable lifestyles. This book analyses ethnographic data gathered from participants in Alternative Food Networks from farmers’ markets to community gardens, agricultural shows and food redistribution services. Drawing on theoretical insights from political ecology, eco-feminism, ecological humanities, human geography and critical food studies, the author demonstrates the sticky and enduring nature of anthropocentric discourses. Chapters in this book experiment with alternative grammars to support and amplify ecologically attuned practices of human and more-than-human togetherness. In times of increasing climate variability, this book calls for alternative ontologies and world-making practices centred on food which encourage agility and adaptability and are shown to be enacted through playful tinkering guided by an ethic of convivial dignity. This innovative book offers a valuable insight into food networks and sustainability which will be useful core reading for courses focusing on critical food studies, food ecology and environmental studies.

With increasing pressure on resources, the looming spectre of climate change and growing anxiety among eaters, ecology and food are at the heart of the political debates surrounding agriculture and diet. This unique contribution unravels agri-environmental issues at different spatial levels, from local to global, documenting the major shifts in agriculture from a long-term perspective. The book begins by exploring the changes in the industrialisation and socialisation of agriculture over time, through the lens of institutional economics including The French Regulation School and Conventions Theory. Building on Polanyi’s ‘Great Transformation’, the chapters in this volume analyse long-term and contemporary changes in agriculture and food systems that have occurred throughout the last few centuries. Key chapters focus on the historical changes in provisioning and the social relations of production, consumption, and regulation of food in different socio-political contexts. The future of agriculture is addressed through an analysis of controversial contemporary political claims and their engagement with strategies that aim to improve the sustainability of agriculture and food consumption. To shed light on ongoing changes and the future of food, this book asks important environmental and social questions and analyses how industrial agriculture has played out in various contexts. It is recommended supplementary reading for postgraduates and researchers in agricultural studies, food studies, food policy, the agri-food political economy and political and economic geography.

Media interest in food has intensified in recent years, leading to a contemporary food landscape where ‘alternative’ food practices are increasingly visible. Concerns that were once exclusively the domain of activist movements motivated by environmental, animal rights, health and anti-corporate agendas are now central to primetime television cooking shows, mobile apps and social media. This book is the first to explore the impact of popular media and culture on contemporary food politics. Through examination of a range of media and cultural texts, including news, digital media, advertising and food labelling, it brings together leading and emerging scholars in food studies, media and communications, sociology, law, policy studies, business, and geography. The book explores the practices of alternative food movements, the marketing techniques of conventional and alternative food producers, and the relationships between food industries, media, and the public. Covering topics ranging from agtech start-ups and social justice projects, to new ways of mediating food waste, celebrity, and ‘ethical’ foods, Alternative Food Politics reveals the importance of media as a driver of food system transformation. This is a pivotal time for media and food industries, and this book is essential reading for scholars and students seeking to better understand the futures, possibilities and limits of food politics today.

This book explores the interrelations between food, technology and knowledge-sharing practices in producing digital food cultures. Digital Food Cultures adopts an innovative approach to examine representations and practices related to food across a variety of digital media: blogs and vlogs (video blogs), Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, technology developers’ promotional media, online discussion forums and self-tracking apps and devices. The book emphasises the diversity of food cultures available on the internet and other digital media, from those celebrating unrestrained indulgence in food to those advocating very specialised diets requiring intense commitment and focus. While most of the digital media and devices discussed in the book are available and used by people across the world, the authors offer valuable insights into how these global technologies are incorporated into everyday lives in very specific geographical contexts. This book offers a novel contribution to the rapidly emerging area of digital food studies and provides a framework for understanding contemporary practices related to food production and consumption internationally.

Food is everywhere in contemporary mediascapes, as witnessed by the increase in cookbooks, food magazines, television cookery shows, online blogs, recipes, news items and social media posts about food. This mediatization of food means that the media often interplays between food consumption and everyday practices, between private and political matters and between individuals, groups, and societies. This volume argues that contemporary food studies need to pay more attention to the significance of media in relation to how we 'do' food. Understanding food media is particularly central to the diverse contemporary social and cultural practices of food where media use plays an increasingly important but also differentiated and differentiating role in both large-scale decisions and most people's everyday practices. The contributions in this book offer critical studies of food media discourses and of media users' interpretations, negotiations and uses that construct places and spaces as well as possible identities and everyday practices of sameness or otherness that might form new, or renew old food politics.

Despite the promise and optimism surrounding the post-apartheid transition, South African society continues to be highly racialised in its discourses, identities and practices, even within the very strategies that aim to change power relations and heal racialised divisions. Renowned for its brutal past practices, the wine industry in South Africa has long been associated with white power and black exploitation, and remains dogged by continuing allegations of poor working conditions and labour abuses. Through in-depth, longitudinal fieldwork, this book considers how different ethics interact and draws attention to the positive changes and continuing development challenges faced in South Africa. Situating practice at its heart, it brings a novel, everyday and micro-scale dimension to understandings of empowerment in the post-apartheid South African wine industry. It develops a critical analysis of the interplay between practice, as scaled and inherently spatial, and discourse to conceptualise how 'big' concepts such as empowerment are articulated, materialised and experienced at the ground level. Through this, it gives voices to the marginalised who experience 'empowerment', setting these within the context of their relations with the other stakeholders who shape this engagement. This book contributes to broader critical social science debates around ethical development and questions of power and empowerment in development interventions. This is critical to reducing the disconnection between policy aims and realities within development and empowerment initiatives, as well as enabling (ethical) commodities to be strategic in retaining their appeal throughout their networks.

With the ever rising demand for meat around the world, the production of meat has changed dramatically in the past few decades. What has brought about the increasing popularity and attendant normalization of factory farms across many parts of the world? What are some of the ways to resist such broad convergences in meat production and how successful are they? This book locates the answers to these questions at the intersection between the culture, science and political economy of meat production and consumption. It details how and why techniques of production have spread across the world, albeit in a spatially uneven way. It argues that the modern meat production and consumption sphere is the outcome of a complex matrix of cultural politics, economics and technological faith. Drawing from examples across the world (including America, Europe and Asia), the tensions and repercussions of meat production and consumption are also analyzed. From a geographical perspective, food animals have been given considerably less attention compared to wild animals or pets. This book, framed conceptually by critical animal studies, governmentality and commodification, is a theoretically driven and empirically rich study that advances the study of food animals in geography as well as in the wider social sciences.