Beyond Global Food Supply Chains: Crisis, Disruption, Regeneration [Paperback]

This open access book takes the upheaval of the global COVID-19 pandemic as a springboard from which to interrogate a larger set of structural, environmental and political fault lines running through the global food system. In a context in which disruptions to the production, distribution, and consumption of food are figured as exceptions to the smooth, just-in-time efficiencies of global supply chains, these essays reveal the global food system as one that is inherently disruptive of human lives and flourishing, and of relationships between people, places, and environments. The pandemic thus represents a particular, acute moment of disruption, offering a lens on a deeper, longer set of systemic processes, and shining new light on transformational possibilities.

Part1 Foundations.- Chapter 1. Introduction: Beyond Global Supply Chains.- Chapter 2: Supply Chains As Disruption.- Chapter 3: Agri-Investment Cashing In On Covid-19.- Part2 Production.- Chapter 4: Putting The Crisis To Work.- Chapter 5: Going Against The Grain In The West Australian Wheatbelt.- Chapter 6: Reviving Community Agrarianism In Post-Socialist China.- Part3 Distribution.- Chapter 7: Fantasies Of Logistics In Aotearoa New Zealand.- Chapter 8: Reproducing Hunger In Pandemic America.- Chapter 9: The Pandemic Supermarket.- Part4 Food Politics.- Chapter 10: Disruption As Reprieve?.- Chapter 11: The Un Food Systems Summit: Disaster Capitalism And The Future Of Food.- Chapter 12: Against Consumer Ethics.- Chapter 13. Afterword: Temporary Measures.

 

Victoria Stead is an anthropologist and Australian Research Council DECRA Senior Research Fellow in the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University. Her research sits at the intersection of attention to race and labour relations, land and landscape, and the reverberations of (post)cololS.