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24 - Neoliberal Globalization and Beyond: Food, Farming, and the Environment

from Part VI - Food and Agriculture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2020

By
Geoffrey Lawrence  and
Kiah Smith
Edited by
Katharine Legun ,
Julie C. Keller ,
Michael Carolan  and
Michael M. Bell
Katharine Legun
Affiliation:
Wageningen University and Research, The Netherlands
Julie C. Keller
Affiliation:
University of Rhode Island
Michael Carolan
Affiliation:
Colorado State University
Michael M. Bell
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
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Summary

This chapter investigates the social, political and environmental characteristics and impacts of food and farming in the current era of neoliberal globalization. Drawing from environmental sociology, political economy and political ecology, we consider the ways that problems with capital, labour and land intersect with ecological constraints (such as climate change and declining fossil fuels). Productivist agriculture, industrialisation, supermarketization and financialization have contributed to the demise of local food systems, the promotion of ‘obesogenic’ diets, the creation of food waste and the global ‘land rush’, with implications for both the natural environment and for deteriorating conditions for labour. Farmers have shifted from feeding nations to producing for a global economy in which food is overproduced while global hunger increases. These contradictions have prompted significant social, political, and financial struggles. Multiple ‘neoliberalisms’ have therefore emerged, and neoliberal food and farming is highly contested. The chapter concludes with a discussion of alter-globalization; an alternative to neoliberal globalization that challenges the notion of capitalist growth, highlights limits to consumption, and largely rejects market solutions to environmental problems. The right to food, ‘food sovereignty’, redistributive land reform, smallholder and family farming, de-corporatization, agro-ecology and improved democracy are discussed as key elements informing critique and resistance.

Keywords

Neoliberal globalisationalter-globalizationlabourlandmarkets
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology , pp. 411 - 428
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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