Jonathan Murdoch – författare

From farm to fork, the conventional food chain is under enormous pressure to respond to a whole series of new challenges - food scares in rich countries, food security concerns in poor countries, and a burgeoning problem of obesity in all countries. As more and more people demand to know where their food comes from, and how it is produced, issues of place, power, and provenance assume increasing significance for producers, consumers, and regulators, challenging the corporate forces that shape the 'placeless foodscape'. Far from being confined to niche products, questions about the origins of food are also surfacing in the conventional sector, where labelling has become a major political issue.Drawing on theories of multi-level governance, three leading scholars in the field explore the geo-politics of the food chain in different spatial arenas: the World Trade Organization, where free trade principles clash with fair trade concerns in the debate about agricultural reform; the European Union, where producers are under pressure from environmentalists for a more traceable and sustainable food system; and the US, where there is a striking contradiction between the rhetoric of free markets and the reality of a heavily subsidised farming sector. To understand the local impact of these global trends, the authors explore three different regional worlds of food: the traditional world of localised quality in Tuscany, the peripheral world of commodity production in Wales, and the frontier world of agri-business in California.

In the wake of BSE, the threat to ban fox hunting and Foot and Mouth disease, the English countryside appears to be in turmoil. Long-standing uses of rural space are in crisis and, unsurprisingly, political processes in rural areas are marked by conflicts between groups, such as farmers, environmentalists, developers and local residents. Using an innovative theoretical approach based on 'networks of conventions', this book investigates the 'regionalisation' of the English countryside through a series of case-studies. These studies are based on a set of 'ideal types': 'the preserved' countryside, where environmental pressures are strongly expressed; the 'contested' countryside, where development processes are shaped by disputes between agrarian and environmental interests; and the 'paternalistic' countryside, where large landowners continue to oversee patterns of land development. It looks in detail at landowners, residents, politicians, planners, farmers, and environmentalists and shows how these groups compete.The Differentiated Countryside argues that the countryside is increasingly governed by regional policies. It becomes hard to discern a single English countryside; we see the emergence of multiple countrysides, places where diverse modes of identity are expressed and differing forms of development take place. Such diversity, it is argued, now lies at the heart of rural England.

The volume presents a range of critical perspectives on the contemporary agri-food sector. The starting point is the recognition that geography matters in agri-food more than ever, and it plays a diverse range of roles in shaping production-consumption relations. With hindsight, it may be argued that the extensive rural sociological literature on the globalisation of food over the past twenty years has tended to over-emphasise the degree to which food products and processes have indeed been industrialised and standardised. But if diversity and variety have become increasingly significant in distinguishing food commodities, spaces of production, and the practices of consumption, how are we to critically understand and theorise this complexity? What are the features of the institutional, private, public and civic frameworks that work to promote and sustain diversity and complexity in the international food sector both within and between the global and the local? What new or reconfigured sets of power relations are developing through the unfolding of this complexity; and what do these suggest for the sustainability or vulnerability of rural locales and natures? Through the two sections of the book - first concerning theorising complexity, and the second, problematising local development and local complexities - and bringing together under this theme international theoretical and empirical comparisons, the book begins to explore this rich rural sociological and development field. The chapters examine in detail the ways that constellations of organisations, cultures and entrepreneurial practices become embedded in discrete spatial areas. They show the importance of these areas and their associated institutions to the contemporary, and increasingly contingent development of the international food system. Both sections of the volume take a critical perspective when examining the agri-food sector, exploring the sociological and developmental impact of the contemporary food sector.

What are the key rationalities that underpin planning policy discourses and how do they 'frame' seemingly irreconcilable conflicts around development and environmental protection? Providing a thorough assessment of these important questions, this stimulating book reviews planning policy in the UK and the rationality of 'sustainable development'. Supported by a wealth of empirical material collected over the past ten years, the study examines the national, regional and local tiers of planning for housing. It analyzes whether the rationality of planning for 'sustainable development' allows a new spatial sensibility to inform planning policy, and whether it still responds to the social demands that were previously incorporated within the developmental method. The overriding concern, which the authors respond to and expand upon, is whether planning for sustainable development can provide a satisfactory basis upon which to re-establish contemporary planning.

What are the key rationalities that underpin planning policy discourses and how do they 'frame' seemingly irreconcilable conflicts around development and environmental protection? Providing a thorough assessment of these important questions, this stimulating book reviews planning policy in the UK and the rationality of 'sustainable development'. Supported by a wealth of empirical material collected over the past ten years, the study examines the national, regional and local tiers of planning for housing. It analyzes whether the rationality of planning for 'sustainable development' allows a new spatial sensibility to inform planning policy, and whether it still responds to the social demands that were previously incorporated within the developmental method. The overriding concern, which the authors respond to and expand upon, is whether planning for sustainable development can provide a satisfactory basis upon which to re-establish contemporary planning.

The second in the "Restructuring Rural Areas" series, this work presents an examination of the way in which the rural, and the concept of rurality is being reconstructed within urban regions.; It argues that the rural is not a fixed category but the outcome of political, economic and socio- cultural pressures. These pressures are exacerbated in southeast England - an area dominated by London and the patterns of growth associated with that city. Through close analysis of key land development processes and a series of village studies, the authors give a forceful demonstration of the way in which certain social groups are becoming increasingly influential in determining the material and social shape of rural areas in the United Kingdom. The formation of class identity, it is argued, is closely bound up with the formation of certain local spaces; class and space must be considered as combined elements in the development of rural locales. To illustrate this the authors document in detail the means by which dominant groups represent themselves within the development process and show how the exclusion of certain kinds of development leads to the exclusion of certain social groups.