Global Activism in Food Politics - (International Relations and Development) by A Mann (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Who should provide food, and through what relationships? Whose livelihoods should be protected? For over 20 years the peasant farmers of La Via Campesina have been engaged in the fight against injustice, hunger and poverty under the banner of food sovereignty, 'the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems'. They campaign for healthy, sustainable alternatives to an industrial food system controlled by agribusiness companies and the architects of unfair trade agreements. This book draws on grounded case studies of agrarian movements in the Americas and Europe as exemplars of a 'power shift, ' as local opposition scales up to global action in an effort to wrest control of our food away from transnational corporations and back to communities.

Review Quotes

"This book offers a comprehensive, multi-dimensional account of the global food system and the generation of a burgeoning food sovereignty counter-movement from crisis. Not only does the author provide a substantive mapping of the structuring and institutional politics of agribusiness from production to retailing; she also details the organising trajectory and culture of global opposition through cumulative networking and successful discursive reframing of what is at stake in a food insecure and environmentally challenged world. A didactic and challenging template to agri-food scholars and activists alike." - Philip McMichael, Professor of Development Sociology, Cornell University, USA

"A detailed insight into how the world's largest social movement has achieved structural and discursive power shifts in food politics in 20 years of campaigning for food sovereignty, offering an interesting and inspiring analysis of the movement's broad repertoire of action, including work with alternative media." - Sofia Monsalve Suàrez, Coordinator of Global Land Program, FIAN International

"We have a lot of work to do to recover our economies, ecosystems, and lives from the dictates of multi-national corporations. Vía Campesina is one of the most important models for doing this work and Alana has laboured to provide a thorough guide to their work and liberatory political concepts. Every sentence of Global Activism in Food Politics: Power Shift is either an indictmentor an inspiration." - Amory Starr, activist, sociologist, and documentary filmmaker.

About the Author

Alana Mann is a Senior Lecturer and Director of the Master of Strategic Public Relations in the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney, Australia.