Food Utopias

Paul Stock is Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and the Environmental Studies Program, University of Kansas, USA. Michael Carolan is Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology, Colorado State University, USA. Christopher Rosin is Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Sustainability: Agriculture, Food, Energy, Environment, University of Otago, New Zealand.

"As we choke on the carbon-sourced calories of industrial food this book alerts us to the openings for doing food differently. Food Utopias shows us how critique, experimentation and an open embrace of indeterminate processes can make a difference. This book is seriously fun to think with and a must-read for all who are invested in a liveable future." – J.K. Gibson-Graham, Institute for Culture and Society, University of Western Sydney, Australia. "Food Utopias re-imagines the enduring intellectual project of utopian-inspired thought and praxis by linking it directly into food, and gives utopian visioning serious twenty-first century content by asking how we might ‘start to talk about and envision new ways of doing, growing and sharing food’. Its timely message offers hopefulness, and a rebuttal of the thought constrictions of mainstream corporate food narratives that declare there are no other ways to do food bar theirs. The book invokes food utopias as a tool to experiment food in the multiple and in its total experiences, to open and sustain dialogue around whose ideas should matter over food. This is boundary-breaking stuff aimed at the widest of readerships." – Richard Le Heron, School of Environment, University of Auckland, New Zealand. "H. G. Wells wasn’t just a wellspring of science fiction – he was an active social scientist. He thought that 'the creation of utopias – and their exhaustive criticism – is the proper and distinctive method of sociology.' In this book, Paul Stock, Michael Carolan and Christopher Rosin have curated a fine collection of thoughtful explorations of, and in, the utopian tradition. These essays encourage students, scholars and dreamers alike to imagine the world with fewer constraints – and a better sense of history. H.G. Wells would be proud." – Raj Patel, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin, USA. "The food system is a global success – feeding more people than ever before. Yet environments are harmed, hunger persists, and huge numbers of people suffer the often severe consequences of eating badly. This fine, timely and incisive book offers a novel framework for collaborative action among scientists of many disciplines (from sociologists to ecologists) and practitioners by setting out attainable utopias for food and agriculture: how we can eat well, engage more, be healthy and save the planet too. No such journey is easy, but making clear there are both pathways and multiple end points is a necessary start. Acting together, much now is possible." – Jules Pretty, University of Essex, UK."[G]eographers will find this book relevant to understanding the contemporary articulations of food, aiming to both assess, and present alternatives to, the current food system." – Social & Cultural Geography, Diana Soeiro, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal.

• Foreword: Food Utopias in Perspective Fred Kirschenmann Foreword Wes Jackson Part 1: Food and Utopias 1. Food Utopias: Hoping the Future of Agriculture Paul Stock, Michael Carolan, and Christopher Rosin 2. Everyday Life in Utopia: Food Lyman T. Sargent Part 2: Emergent Food Utopias 3. From the Nano to the Global Scale: New Utopian Solutions to Food Waste Grant Shoffstall and Zsuzsa Gille 4. ‘We Should Have a Culture Around Food’: Toward a Sustainable Food Utopia in the Ozark-Ouachita Bioregion Joshua Lockyer 5. Urban Agriculture as Embedded in the Social and Solidarity Economy Basel: Developing Sustainable Communities Isidor Walliman 6. Slow Food Presidia: The Nostalgic and the Utopian Cinzia Piatti 7. Towards Utopias of Prefigurative Politics and Food Sovereignty: Experiences of Politicised Peasant Food Production Nave Wald 8. Re-Wilding Food Systems: Visceralities, Utopias, Pragmatism, and Practice Michael Carolan Part 3: Food, Ethics and Morality 9. Sketching a Global Agro-Ecology Eutopia: The Land Institute in Directional Context John W. Head 10. Contradictions in Hope and Care: Technological Utopianism, Biosphere II and the Catholic Worker Farms Paul Stock 11. Spurlock’s Vomit and Visible Food Utopias: Enacting a Positive Politics of Food Hugh Campbell Conclusion: An Invitation to Food Utopias 12. Food as Mediator: Opening the Dialogue around Food Paul Stock, Michael Carolan, and Christopher Rosin