Slow Living [Hardcover]

Speed is the essence of the modern era, but our faster, more frenetic lives often trouble us and leave us wondering how we are meant to live in today's world. Slow Living explores the philosophy and politics of 'slowness' as it investigates the growth of Slow Food into a worldwide, 'eco-gastronomic' movement. Originating in Italy, Slow Food is not only committed to the preservation of traditional cuisines and sustainable agriculture but also the pleasures of the table and a slower approach to life in general. Craig and Parkins argue that slow living is a complex response to processes of globalization. It connects ethics and pleasure, the global and the local, as part of a new emphasis on everyday life in contemporary culture and politics. The 'global everyday' is not a simple tale of speed and geographical dislocation. Instead, we all negotiate different times and spaces that make our quality of life and an 'ethics of living' more pressing concerns. This innovative book shows how slow living is about the challenges of living a more mindful and pleasurable life.

Preface * Acknowledgements * Slow Living in the Global Everyday * Slow living * Everyday life * Global culture * Slow arts of the self * Slow Food
Origins, philosophy and structure * Projects * Citt Slow * New social movements and Slow Food * Time and Speed * The temporalities of modernity * An ethics of time * Sloworld? * Space and Place * Home and work * Deterritorialization, the local and place * Terroir and tradition * Citt Slow * Food and Pleasure * Pleasure * Authenticity and taste * The shared table * The Politics of Slow Living * Visualizing global social movements * The politics of eco-gastronomy * Life politics * Conclusion: Rage against the (bread) machine? * Endnotes * Appendix Official Manifesto for the International Movement for the Defense of and the Right to Pleasure * Bibliography * Index

Wendy Parkins is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English, University of Otago, New ZealanlÃS