Food Utopias Reimagining citizenship, ethics and community [Hardcover]

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 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 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.

Foreword: Food Utopias in Perspective 

Fred Kirschenmann 

Foreword 

Wes Jackson 

Part 1: Food and Utopias 

1. Food Utopias: Hoping the Future of Agriculture 

Paul Stock, Michael Carolan, and Christopher Rosin 

2. Everyday Life in Utopias: Food 

Lyman T. Sargent 

Part 2: Emergent Food Utopias 

3. From the Nano to the Global Scale: New Utopian Solutions to Food Waste 

GranlSR