Food Resistance Movements

Food Resistance Movements: Journeying Through Alternative Food Networks (Alternatives and Futures: Cultures, Practices, Activism and Utopias) Hardcover – 5 Jan. 2023

by Ferne Edwards (Author)

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This book examines food resistance movements as a form of alternative food network, charting the author’s journey as a cultural anthropologist through three food resistance movements.
In Australia, freegans’ consumption of ‘garbage’ in the food waste movement of the early 2000s reveals the extent of food going to waste from commercial sources while people go hungry. In contrast, Venezuela’s food sovereignty movement is part of a national transition from a capitalist to socialist economy, highlighting processes of decentralisation, collectivisation, and government-grassroots’ coalitions. The study of autonomous spaces in Catalonia illuminates how food sharing can enable people to live their politics, as well as the centrality of issues around urban governance, consumption, technology and use of space to food resistance efforts. This engaging volume brings an important and engaging contribution to current discussions around the transition to just and sustainable food systems.

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Review

Ferne Edwards has spent years living and researching and eating with visionaries of the future of food. Across three continents, her honest, rigorous, and thought-provoking ethnography uncovers the promise, and the dangers, of some blueprints for food sovereignty. We ignore those lessons at our peril.

— Raj Patel, Stuffed and Starved (2008), Research Professor, The University of Texas at Austin, USA

The risks and problems associated with globalised food systems are becoming abundantly clear, so too is the need for credible alternatives. This punchy and accessible volume brings much-needed clarity to the questions of what resistance looks like and how it might facilitate widespread change. With a finely honed ethnographic sensibility, Ferne Edwards explores an impressive range of urban food movements – foregrounding the experiences of participants and the lessons that can be learnt. At once theoretically sophisticated and politically astute, Food Resistance Movements breathes new life into scholarly and activist perspectives on Alternative Food Networks.

— Professor David M. Evans, co-editor of Waste Matters: New Perspectives on Food and Society (2013), University of Bristol, UK

This volume is a lively and important contribution to understanding global movements for food justice.  Grounded in years of ethnographic research on “freegan” strategies to counter food waste in Australia, food sovereignty efforts in urban Venezuela, and autonomous food spaces in Barcelona, it provocatively uncovers the successes and failures of individual and collective tactics to democratize foodways.  It will be essential reading for scholars, students and activists interested in forging fair and sustainable food systems.

— Carole Counihan, co-editor of Food Activism: Agency, Democracy and Economy (2013)

 The process of devising and implementing more sustainable and participatory alternatives to the mainstream food system takes many diverse forms and frequently involves acts of defiance and resistance to the status quo. That growing numbers of people around the world are engaging in such acts reveals the desire to revitalise our relationship to food, to each other and to the planet.  Ferne Edwards brings us to the heart of three very different kinds of resistance in the cities of Melbourne, Caracas, and Barcelona. Drawing upon extensive fieldwork the book reveals the very concrete challenges, political significance, and potentially emancipatory character of these different initiatives. This is a powerful narrative that will offer a source of inspiration for many.  

— Colin Sage, Independent Research Scholar

 Ferne Edwards’ Food Resistance Movements is a timely, deep ethnography of eco-social resistance movements that explores the power of experimentation in the creation of new urban food systems. This book produces an incredibly valuable multi-scaled analysis of urban food movements across three continents, showing us the lived struggles of what it means to create and experiment with doing food differently in post- and anti-capitalist food spaces. More now than ever, we need to learn from and apply the lessons from this book to produce different and more equal food futures in the cities in which we labour to live and thrive. 

— Michael Goodman, Professor of Geography, Department of Geography and Environmental Science, Global Development Research Division, University of Reading, UK

This concise text gives an unflinching state-of-the art survey of popular resistance to the prevailing global-mass-market industrial food system, backed up with three excellent ethnographic case studies. A must-read for those interested in and teaching about alternative food systems.

— Richard Wilk, Open Anthropology Institute andIndiana University

This is a book which is very timely in relation to increasing concerns about food distribution and food waste ― in connection with global warming and the war in Ukraine. These problems are not going away but will intensify, and this is an excellent resource regarding some of the approaches that are being tried in different parts of the world.

— Dr Terrence Leahy, University of Newcastle, Australia

From the Back Cover

This book charts the author’s journey as a cultural anthropologist through food resistance movements over two decades, in Catalonia (Spain), Australia and Venezuela. It brings important lessons from the field to current discussions on transitioning to just and sustainable food systems.

In Australia, freegans’ consumption of ‘garbage’ reveals the extent of food going to waste from commercial sources while people go hungry. In contrast, Venezuela’s food sovereignty movement is part of an attempted national transition from a capitalist to socialist economy, highlighting processes of decentralisation, collectivisation, and government grassroots’ coalitions. The study of autonomous spaces in Catalonia illuminates how food sharing can enable people to live their politics, while highlighting governance, consumption, technology and use of space in food resistance efforts.

To purchase a copy, please visit the Routledge website.

If you are interested in reviewing the text (and receiving a free text), please contact Ferne Edwards at f.edwards@surrey.ac.uk.

Blog posts that highlight parts of the book include:
* Reflecting on two decades of food resistance movements
* Recounting tales from the bin
* From an invisible to global problem: the twists and turns of the food waste movement