Food Utopias: Reimagining Citizenship, Ethics and Community PDF
Preview Food Utopias: Reimagining Citizenship, Ethics and Community
Food Utopias Food is a contentious and emotive issue, subject to critiques from multiple perspectives. Alternative food movements – including the different articulations of local, food miles, seasonality, food justice, food knowledge and food sovereignty – consistently invoke themes around autonomy, sufficiency, cooperation, mutual aid, freedom and responsibility. In this stimulating and provocative book the authors link these issues to utopias and intentional communities. Using a food utopias framework presented in the introduction, they examine food stories in three interrelated and complementary ways: utopias as critique of existing systems; utopias as engagement with experimentation of the novel, the forgotten and the hopeful in the future of the food system; and utopias as a process that recognizes the time and difficulty inherent in changing the status quo. The chapters address theoretical aspects of food utopias and also present case studies from a range of contexts and regions, including Argentina, Italy, Switzerland and the USA. These focus on key issues in contemporary food studies including equity, locality, the sacred, citizenship, community and food sovereignty. Food Utopias offers ways forward to imagine a creative and convivial food system. Paul V. Stock is Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and the Environmental Studies Program, University of Kansas, USA. Michael Carolan is Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology, Colorado State University, USA. Christopher Rosin is Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Sustainability: Agriculture, Food, Energy, Environment, University of Otago, New Zealand. Routledge Studies in Food, Society and Environment Street Food Culture, economy, health and governance Edited by Ryzia De Cássia Vieira Cardoso, Michèle Companion and Stefano Roberto Marras Savoring Alternative Food School gardens, healthy eating and visceral difference Jessica Hayes-Conroy Human Rights and the Food Sovereignty Movement Reclaiming control Priscilla Claeys Food Utopias Reimagining citizenship, ethics and community Edited by Paul V. Stock, Michael Carolan and Christopher Rosin Food Sovereignty in International Context Discourse, politics and practice of place Edited by Amy Trauger For further details please visit the series page on the Routledge website: http://www.routledge.com/books/series/RSFSE/ “As we choke on the carbon-sourced calories of industrial food this book alerts us to the openings for doing food differently. Food Utopias shows us how critique, experimentation and an open embrace of indeterminate processes can make a difference. This book is seriously fun to think with and a must-read for all who are invested in a liveable future.” J.K. Gibson-Graham, Institute for Culture and Society, University of Western Sydney, Australia “Food Utopias re-imagines the enduring intellectual project of utopian-inspired thought and praxis by linking it directly into food, and gives utopian visioning serious twenty-first century content by asking how we might ‘start to talk about and envision new ways of doing, growing and sharing food’. Its timely message offers hopefulness, and a rebuttal of the thought constrictions of mainstream corporate food narratives that declare there are no other ways to do food bar theirs. The book invokes food utopias as a tool to experiment food in the multiple and in its total experiences, to open and sustain dialogue around whose ideas should matter over food. This is boundary-breaking stuff aimed at the widest of readerships.” Richard Le Heron, School of Environment, University of Auckland, New Zealand “H. G. Wells wasn’t just a wellspring of science fiction – he was an active social scientist. He thought that ‘the creation of utopias – and their exhaustive criticism – is the proper and distinctive method of sociology.’ In this book, Paul Stock, Michael Carolan and Christopher Rosin have curated a fine collection of thoughtful explorations of, and in, the utopian tradition. These essays encourage students, scholars and dreamers alike to imagine the world with fewer constraints – and a better sense of history. H.G. Wells would be proud.” Raj Patel, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin, USA “The food system is a global success – feeding more people than ever before. Yet environments are harmed, hunger persists, and huge numbers of people suffer the often severe consequences of eating badly. This fine, timely and incisive book offers a novel framework for collaborative action among scientists of many disciplines (from sociologists to ecologists) and practitioners by setting out attainable utopias for food and agriculture: how we can eat well, engage more, be healthy and save the planet too. No such journey is easy, but making clear there are both pathways and multiple end points is a necessary start. Acting together, much now is possible.” Jules Pretty, University of Essex, UK This page intentionally left blank Food Utopias Reimagining citizenship, ethics and community Edited by Paul V. Stock, Michael Carolan and Christopher Rosin First published 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2015 Paul V. Stock, Michael Carolan and Christopher Rosin selection and editorial material; individual chapters, the contributors The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Food utopias : reimagining citizenship, ethics and community / edited by Paul Stock, Michael Carolan and Christopher Rosin. pages cm. -- (Routledge studies in food, society and environment) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Food--Social aspects. 2. Social movements. 3. Utopias. 4. Citizenship. 5. Values. 6. Communities. I. Stock, Paul V. II. Carolan, Michael S. III. Rosin, Christopher J. (Christopher John) GN407.F687 2015 394.1'2--dc23 2014030614 ISBN: 978-1-138-78849-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-76553-2 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby Contents List of contributors ix Acknowledgments xi Foreword: food utopias in perspective xii FREDERICK KIRSCHENMANN Foreword xvi WES JACKSON PART I Food and utopias 1 1 Food utopias: hoping the future of agriculture 3 PAUL V. STOCK, MICHAEL CAROLAN AND CHRISTOPHER ROSIN 2 Everyday life in utopia: food 14 LYMAN TOWER SARGENT PART II Emergent food utopias 33 3 From the nano to the global scale: new utopian solutions to food waste 35 GRANT SHOFFSTALL AND ZSUZSA GILLE 4 “We should have a culture around food”: toward a sustainable food utopia in the Ozark-Ouachita bioregion 57 JOSHUA LOCKYER viii Contents 5 Urban agriculture as embedded in the social and solidarity economy Basel: developing sustainable communities 79 ISIDOR WALLIMANN 6 Slow Food Presidia: the nostalgic and the utopian 88 CINZIA PIATTI 7 Towards utopias of prefigurative politics and food sovereignty: experiences of politicised peasant food production 107 NAVE WALD 8 Re-wilding food systems: visceralities, utopias, pragmatism, and practice 126 MICHAEL CAROLAN PART III Food, ethics and morality 141 9 Sketching a global agroecology eutopia: The Land Institute in directional context 143 JOHN W. HEAD 10 Contradictions in hope and care: technological utopianism, Biosphere II and the Catholic Worker farms 171 PAUL V. STOCK 11 Spurlock’s vomit and visible food utopias: enacting a positive politics of food 195 HUGH CAMPBELL PART IV Conclusion: an invitation to food utopias 217 12 Food as mediator: opening the dialogue around food 219 PAUL V. STOCK, MICHAEL CAROLAN AND CHRISTOPHER ROSIN Index 226 Contributors Hugh Campbell is Professor and Chair of Sociology, Gender and Social Work at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Michael Carolan is Professor and Chair of Sociology at Colorado State University, USA. Zsuzsa Gille is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Illinois, USA. John W. Head is Robert W. Wagstaff Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Kansas, USA. Wes Jackson is President and Founder, The Land Institute, Salina, Kansas, USA. Frederick Kirschenmann is President of Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture and Distinguished Fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, USA. Joshua Lockyer is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Arkansas Tech University, USA. Cinzia Piatti is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Christopher Rosin is Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Sustainability at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Lyman Tower Sargent is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri – St. Louis, USA. Grant Shoffstall is Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at Williams College, USA. Paul V. Stock is Assistant Professor of Sociology and the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Kansas, USA.
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