Food in a Just World: Compassionate Eating in a Time of Climate Change

by Tracey Harris, Terry Gibbs

Overview

Food in a Just World examines the violence, social breakdown, and environmental consequences of our global system of food production, distribution, and consumption, where each step of the process is built on some form of exploitation. While highlighting the broken system’s continuities from European colonialism, the authors argue that the seeds of resilience, resistance, and inclusive cultural resurgence are already being reflected in the day-to-day actions of communities around the world. Calling for urgent change, the book looks at how genuine democracy would give individuals and communities meaningful control over the decisions that impact their lives when seeking to secure humanely this most basic human need.

Drawing on the perspectives of advocates, activists, workers, researchers, and policymakers, Harris and Gibbs explore the politics of food in the context of capitalist globalization and the climate crisis, uncovering the complexities in our relationships with one another, with other animals, and with the natural world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781509554034
Publisher:	Polity Press
Publication date:	12/07/2023
Sold by:	JOHN WILEY & SONS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	473 KB

About the Author

Tracey Harris is Associate Professor of Sociology at Cape Breton University
Terry Gibbs is Professor of Political Science at Cape Breton University

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 – Food Justice Needs a Just World: Confronting Structural Violence Against Land, Humans, and Nonhuman Animals
Chapter 2 – Capitalist Dreams and Nightmares: Food Systems, the Animal-Industrial Complex, and Climate Disruption
Chapter 3 – Working in Hell: Labor in the Industrial Production of Animals as Food
Chapter 4 – What If We Really Are What We Eat?: Challenging a Colonial-Capitalist Diet
Chapter 5 – The Upside Down: The Hidden World of Nonhuman Animals as Food
Chapter 6 – Towards a Compassionate Food System

Editorial Reviews

While providing a rigorous critique of the global food system and its exploitative, violent, and ecologically destructive trajectory, this book takes the reader on a unique journey towards a hopeful future, one where humans can live in harmony with nature and other species.”
Vandana Shiva, Founder of Navdanya, and author of Who Really Feeds the World?

“A radically new approach to uncovering and understanding the contemporary food crisis, from a deeply personal and deeply critical perspective. The authors show what food justice and a compassionate food system could look like, and how it is being constructed around the world.”
Avi Chomsky, Salem State University, and author of Is Science Enough? Forty Critical Questions About Climate Justice

“An up-to-the-minute introduction to issues of class, race, gender, and species in what we eat, as well as to how larger issues of economics and capitalism affect workers in the meat industry. Whether you eat meat or not, the book convincingly argues that these issues demand serious attention.”
Marion Nestle, New York University, and author of Food Politics

“Food in a Just World offers a worthy successor and update to Lappé’s classic [Diet for a Small Planet]. […] Their analysis offers a new way to understand how the personal is political and the political is personal.”
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics

From the Publisher