The Fight Over Food: Producers, Consumers, and Activists Challenge the Global Food System

Published by Penn State University Press 2007

The Fight Over Food

Producers, Consumers, and Activists Challenge the Global Food System

Edited by: Wynne Wright and Gerad Middendorf

In the series Rural Studies

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780271034980

Overview
Contents

About this book

“One problem with the food system is that price is the bottom line rather than having the bottom line be land stewardship, an appreciation for the environmental and social value of small-scale family farms, or for organically grown produce.” —Interview with farmer in Skagit County, Washington

For much of the later twentieth century, food has been abundant and convenient for most residents of advanced industrial societies. The luxury of taking the safety and dependability of food for granted pushed it to the back burner in the consciousness of many. Increasingly, however, this once taken-for-granted food system is coming under question on issues such as the humane treatment of animals, genetically engineered foods, and social and environmental justice. Many consumers are no longer content with buying into the mainstream, commodity-driven food market on which they once depended. Resistance has emerged in diverse forms, from protests at the opening of McDonald’s restaurants worldwide to ever-greater interest in alternatives, such as CSAs (community-supported agriculture), fair trade, and organic foods. The food system is increasingly becoming an arena of struggle that reflects larger changes in societal values and norms, as expectations are moving beyond the desire for affordable, convenient foods to a need for healthy and environmentally sound alternatives. In this book, leading scholars and scholar-activists provide case studies that illuminate the complexities and contradictions that surround the emergence of a “new day” in agriculture.

The essays found in The Fight Over Food analyze and evaluate both the theoretical and historical contexts of the agrifood system and the ways in which trends of individual action and collective activity have led to an “accumulation of resistance” that greatly affects the mainstream market of food production. The overarching theme that integrates the case studies is the idea of human agency and the ways in which people purposefully and creatively generate new forms of action or resistance to facilitate social changes within the structure of predominant cultural norms. Together these studies examine whether these combined efforts will have the strength to create significant and enduring transformations in the food system.

Author / Editor information

Wright Wynne :

Wynne Wright is Assistant Professor of Community, Food, and Agriculture at Michigan State UniversityMiddendorf Gerad :

Gerad Middendorf is Associate Professor of Sociology at Kansas State University.

Reviews

“The categorization of the essays and the overarching theme of agency results in a balanced approach, avoiding easy tropes or doomsday scenarios. Individual essays are consistently sound in scholarship.”
—J. M. Deutsch, Choice

“How will we feed ourselves in the future? Who will decide? Can people acting together make a difference in the food system to come? This book takes up the key sociological questions of structure and agency in addressing these questions. It moves beyond abstract debates, applying the structure/agency lens to a most important human system—the one that produces and distributes our food. . . .
“The Fight Over Food illuminates possibilities for change in the food system and simultaneously reminds us of the constraints of global capitalism. This book will be of interest not only to sociologists who study food and agriculture, but to all students of social change within a variety of disciplines. The Fight Over Food points us in directions for our engagement both as scholars and as citizens of the world who care about food.”
—Patricia Allen, American Journal of Sociology

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction Fighting Over Food: Change in the Agrifood System Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Contributors Wynne Wright and Gerad Middendorf Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
part I. conceptual framework
1. Agency and Resistance in the Sociology of Agriculture and Food Alessandro Bonanno and Douglas Constance Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	29
2. Agency and the Agrifood System William Friedland Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	45
3. resistance, agency, and counterwork: a theoretical positioning Norman Long Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
PART II MAKING ROOM FOR AGENCY
4 counterhegemony or bourgeois piggery? food politics and the case of foodshare Josée Johnston Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	93
5 resistance, redistribution, and power in the fair trade banana initiative Aimee Shreck Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
6 sustaining outrage: cultural capital, strategic location, and motivating sensibilities in the u.s. anti-genetic engineering movement William Munro and Rachel Schurman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
7 social life and transformation in salmon fisheries and aquaculture Michael Skladany Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177
PART III CONSTRAINTS TO AGENCY
8 infertile ground: the struggle for a new puerto rican food system Amy Guptill Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	203
9 possibilities for revitalizing local agriculture: evidence from four counties in washington state Raymond Jussaume and Kazumi Kondoh Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
10 consumers and citizens in the global agrifood system: the cases of new zealand and south africa in the global red meat chain Keiko Tanaka and Elizabeth Ransom Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	247
conclusion: from mindful eating to structural change Wynne Wright and Gerad Middendorf Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	273
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	287

Language: English
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 312
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 1
- Images: 3
- Other: 3 illustrations/1 map

eBook

Published: June 17, 2015
ISBN: 9780271034980