Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

In the long run, will we be fed?

  • Published:
Agriculture and Human Values Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This Symposium provides an important opportunity to reflect on the current state of scholarship positioning alternative foods against mainstream agri-food systems. Symposia of this kind have a long tradition as marking particular turning points in agrifood debates. This collection provides an opportunity to examine the current positioning of scholarship around the theoretical and methodological fracture line between successor theories to classical political economy and more post-structuralist approaches to alternative economic activities around food and agriculture. In the current collection, despite clear evidence of theoretical positioning around the structural: post-structural divide, I argue that both aspects of agri-food theorizing share similar political intent and are positioned within the same wider political project of agrifood critique. Therefore, despite theoretical fracture, there is a unity of political intention that continues to bind together this particular field of research and practice.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. In contrast, the recent collection by Stock et al. (2015) on Food Utopias is a refreshingly open engagement with our need to be more explicit about our political and values projects as scholars.

Abbreviations

AFRN:

Agri-Food Research Network

ANT:

Actor Network Theory

CSA:

Commodity Systems Approach

FRT:

Food Regime Theory

GMOs:

Genetically Modified Organisms

WTO:

World trade Organization

References

  • Buck, D., C. Getz, and J. Guthman. 1997. From farm to table: The organic vegetable commodity chain of Northern California. Sociologia Ruralis 37(1): 3–20.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Burch, D., R.E. Rickson, and G. Lawrence. 1996. Globalization and agri-food restructuring: perspectives from the Australasia region. Avebury: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burch, D., J. Goss, and G. Lawrence. 1999a. Restructuring global and regional agricultures: Transformations in Australasian agri-food economies and spaces. Avebury: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burch, D., J. Goss, G. Lawrence, and R.E. Rickson. 1999b. The global restructuring of food and agriculture: Contingencies and parallels in Australia and New Zealand. Rural Sociology 64(2): 179–185.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Busch, L. 2000. The moral economy of grades and standards. Journal of Rural Studies 16(3): 273–283.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Busch, L., and A. Juska. 1997. Beyond political economy: Actor networks and the globalization of agriculture. Review of International PoIiticaI Economy 4(4): 688–708.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buttel, F.H., and H. Newby. 1980. The rural sociology of the advanced societies: Critical perspectives. Montclair: Allanheld, Osmun & Co., Publishers Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, H., and J. Dixon. 2009. Introduction to the special symposium: Reflecting on twenty years of the food regimes approach in agri-food studies. Agriculture and Human Values 26(4): 261–265.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, H., C. Rosin, S. Norton, P. Carey, J. Benge, and H. Moller. 2009. Examining the mythologies of organics: Moving beyond the organic/conventional binary. In Food security, nutrition and sustainability, ed. G. Lawrence, K. Lyons, and T. Wallington, 238–251. London: Earthscan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, H., and C. Rosin. 2011. After the ‘organic industrial complex’: An ontological expedition through commercial organic agriculture in New Zealand. Journal of Rural Studies 27(4): 350–361.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carolan, M. 2013a. Putting the ‘alter’ in alternative food futures. New Zealand Sociology 28(4): 145–150.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carolan, M. 2013b. The wild side of agro-food studies: On co-experimentation, politics, change, and hope. Sociologia Ruralis 53(4): 413–431.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carolan, M. 2014. Affective sustainable landscapes and care ecologies: Getting a real feel for alternative food communities. Sustainability Science 10(2): 317–329.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carolan, M. 2016. Adventurous food futures: knowing about alternatives is not enough, we need to feel them. Agriculture and Human Values, this issue.

  • Clendenning, J., W. Dressler, and C. Richards. 2016. Food justice or food sovereignty? Understanding the rise of urban food movements in the USA. Agriculture and Human Values, this issue.

  • Constance, D.H. 2008. The emancipatory question: The next step in the sociology of agrifood systems? Agriculture and Human Values 25(2): 151–155.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crutzen, P.J. 2002. The “anthropocene”. Journal de Physique IV (Proceedings) 12(10): 1–5.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dixon, J. 2002. The changing chicken: Chooks, cooks and culinary culture. Sydney, NSW: UNSW Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dixon, J. and C. Richards. 2016. On Food Security and Alternative Food Networks: Understanding and performing food security in the context of urban bias. Agriculture and Human Values, this issue.

  • Dwiartama, A. and C. Piatti. 2016. Assembling local, assembling food security. Agriculture and Human Values, this issue.

  • Fagan, R.H., and R.B. Le Heron. 1994. Reinterpreting the geography of accumulation: The global shift and local restructuring. Environment and Planning D 12: 265.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fagan, R.H., and M.J. Webber. 1994. Global restructuring: The Australian experience. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Friedland, W.H. 1984. Commodity systems analysis: An approach to the sociology of agriculture. In Research in rural sociology and development, ed. H.K. Schwarzweller, 221–235. Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Friedmann, H., and P. McMichael. 1989. Agriculture and the state system: The rise and decline of national agricultures, 1870 to the present. Sociologia Ruralis 29(2): 93–117.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gibson-Graham, J.K. 1996. The end of capitalism (as we knew it): A feminist critique of political economy. Minneapolis, Minnesota: U of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gibson-Graham, J.K. 2006. The end of capitalism (as we knew it): A feminist critique of political economy—with a new introduction. Minneapolis, Minnesota: U of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goodman, D. 2001. Ontology matters: The relational materiality of nature and agro-food studies. Sociologia Ruralis 41(2): 182–200.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodman, D., and M. Watts (eds.). 1997. Globalising food: Agrarian questions and global restructuring. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goss, J., D. Burch, and R.W. Rickson. 2000. Agri-food restructuring and third world transnationals: Thailand, the CP Group and the global shrimp industry. World Development 28(3): 513–530.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guthman, J.H. 2000. Agrarian dreams?: The paradox of organic farming in California. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Guthman, J. 2004. The trouble with ‘organic lite’in California: A rejoinder to the ‘conventionalisation’debate. Sociologia Ruralis 44(3): 301–316.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hill, A. 2014. Moving from “matters of fact” to “matters of concern” in order to grow economic food futures in the Anthropocene. Agriculture and Human Values. doi 10.1007/s10460-014-9576-5. Published online 25 Dec 2014.

  • Holt, G., and M. Reed (eds.). 2006. Sociological perspectives of organic agriculture: From pioneer to policy. Wallingford, Oxford: CABI.

    Google Scholar 

  • Larner, W. 2011. C-change? Geographies of crisis. Dialogues in Human Geography 1(3): 319–335.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Larner, W., and R. Le Heron. 2002. From economic globalisation to globalising economic processes: Towards post-structural political economies. Geoforum 33(4): 415–419.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lawrence, G. 1987. Capitalism and the countryside: The rural crisis in Australia. Sydney, NSW: Pluto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Le Heron, R. 1988. State, economy and crisis in New Zealand in the 1980s: Implications for land-based production of a new mode of regulation. Applied Geography 8(4): 273–290.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Le Heron, R. 1989. A political economy perspective on the expansion of New Zealand livestock farming, 1960–1984—Part I. Agricultural policy. Journal of Rural Studies 5(1): 17–32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Le Heron, R. 1993. Globalized agriculture: Political choice. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Le Heron, R. 2003. Creating food futures: Reflections on food governance issues in New Zealand’s agri-food sector. Journal of Rural Studies 19(1): 111–125.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Le Heron, R., and E. Pawson. 1996. Changing places: New Zealand in the nineties. Auckland, NZ: Longman Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Le Heron, R., and N. Lewis. 2009. Theorising food regimes: Intervention as politics. Agriculture and Human Values 26(4): 345–349.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lockie, S., and L. Bourke (eds.). 2001. Rurality bites: The social and environmental transformation of rural Australia. Sydney, NSW: Pluto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McMichael, P. 1979. The genesis of settler capitalism in Australia. Intervention 13: 39–78.

    Google Scholar 

  • McMichael, P. 2009. A food regime genealogy. The Journal of Peasant Studies 36(1): 139–169.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Michelsen, J. ed. 2001. Politics, ideology and practice of organic farming. Special Issue of Sociologia Ruralis 41(1): 3–161.

  • Milani, L.E. and V. Russo. 2016. Re-localizing ‘legal’ food: a social psychology perspective on community resilience, individual empowerment and citizen adaptations in food consumption in Southern Italy. Agriculture and Human Values, this issue.

  • Piatti, C. and A. Dwiartama. 2016. From food security to the enactment of change: introduction to the symposium. Agriculture and Human Values, this issue.

  • Pollan, M. 2001. Behind the organic industrial complex. New York Times Magazine. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/13/magazine/13ORGANIC.html. Accessed 1 Feb 2011.

  • Pollan, M. 2006. The omnivore’s dilemma: A natural history of four meals. London: Bloomsbury.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pollan, M. 2008. In defense of food: An eater’s manifesto. Camberwell: Penguin Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pomeroy, A. 1986. A sociological analysis of structural change in pastoral farming in New Zealand. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Essex.

  • Pritchard, B., and D. Burch. 2003. Agri-food globalization in perspective: International restructuring in the processing tomato industry. Avebury: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosin, C. 2008. The conventions of agri-environmental practice in New Zealand: Farmers, retail driven audit schemes and a new spirit of farming. GeoJournal 73(1): 45–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rosin, C., and H. Campbell. 2009. Beyond bifurcation: Examining the conventions of organic agriculture in New Zealand. Journal of Rural Studies 25(1): 35–47.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rosin, C., P. Stock, and H. Campbell (eds.). 2013. Food systems failure: The global food crisis and the future of agriculture. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Steffen, W., P.J. Crutzen, and J.R. McNeill. 2007. The Anthropocene: Are humans now overwhelming the great forces of nature? AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment 36(8): 614–621.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stock, P.V., M. Carolan, and C. Rosin (eds.). 2015. Food utopias: Reimagining citizenship, ethics and community. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wald, N. and D.P. Hill. 2016. ‘Rescaling’ alternative food systems: From food security to food sovereignty. Agriculture and Human Values, this issue.

  • Wilkinson, J. 1997. A new paradigm for economic analysis? Recent convergences in French social science and an exploration of the convention theory approach with a consideration of its application to the analysis of the agrofood system. International Journal of Human Resource Management 26(3): 335–339.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, R. 1975. The country and the city. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wolf, S., and A. Bonanno (eds.). 2014. The neoliberal regime in the agri-food sector: Crisis, resilience and restructuring. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wright, E.O. 2010. Envisioning real utopias. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sociology, Gender and Social Work, University of Otago, 280 Leith Walk, Dunedin, 9016, New Zealand

    Hugh Campbell

Authors
  1. Hugh Campbell
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hugh Campbell.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Campbell, H. In the long run, will we be fed?. Agric Hum Values 33, 215–223 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-015-9639-2

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-015-9639-2

Keywords

Search

Navigation