Local food systems' movements, practices, and writings pose increasingly visible structures of resistance and counter-pressure to conventional globalizing food systems. The place of food seems to be the quiet centre of the discourses emerging with these movements. The purpose of this paper is to identify issues of 'place', which are variously described as the 'local' and 'community' in the local food systems literature, and to do so in conjunction with the geographic discussion focused on questions and meanings around these spatial concepts. I see raising the profile of questions, complexity and potential of these concepts as an important role and challenge for the scholar-advocate in the realm of local food systems, and for geographers sorting through them. Both literatures benefit from such a foray. The paper concludes, following a 'cautiously normative' tone, that there is strong argument for emplacing our food systems, while simultaneously calling for careful circumspection and greater clarity regarding how we delineate and understand the 'local'. Being conscious of the constructed nature of the 'local', 'community' and 'place' means seeing the importance of local social, cultural and ecological particularity in our everyday worlds, while also recognizing that we are reflexively and dialectially tied to many and diverse locals around the world.

The place of food: mapping out the ‘local’ in local food systems

Agriculture for Development

The central disagreement between McMichael and Bernstein boils down to how each of them analyses food and agriculture in relation to capitalist dynamics. McMichael thinks the main contradictions of capitalism now stem from agriculture, and any positive future will be guided by farmers. Bernstein thinks capitalism has fully absorbed agriculture (including farmers not expelled from the land) into circuits of capital, turning agriculture into simply one of many sectors of accumulation and a major font of surplus labor. They have arrived by different paths to the same deeper question: Granted its illumination of the past, does the food regime approach remain useful for interpreting present contradictions, and if so, how? To invite a wider exploration of this very real and important question, I have tried to shift the debate towards a conversation about the complexity of the current transition. I start by widening the frame of the debate to include other writings by McMichael (his method of incorporated compar...

Commentary: Food regime analysis and agrarian questions: widening the conversation

What place for livestock on a re-greening earth?

Understanding the interaction of human and environmental systems requires understanding the religious dimensions to the integration of ecology and society. Research on the significance of religion to environmental problems and of ecological ideas to religion has emerged into a robust interdisciplinary field. One sign of its vitality lies in the methodological arguments over how to conceptualize and assess that significance. Another lies in the diversity of research projects, which appear within most religious traditions, from many geographical contexts, and in several different disciplines. This article introduces major approaches to the field and key questions raised, and then briefly assesses recent work in three broad areas of tradition.

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-environ-042610-103728

Religion and Environment

This book provides a comprehensive theological framework for assessing the significance of eating. Drawing on diverse theological, philosophical, and anthropological insights, it offers fresh ways to evaluate food production and consumption practices as they are being worked out in today's industrial food economy. Unlike books that focus primarily on vegetarianism and hunger-related concerns, this book broadens the scope of consideration to include the sacramental character of eating, the deep significance of hospitality, the meaning of death and sacrifice, the Eucharist as the place of inspiration and orientation, the importance of saying grace, and the possibility of eating in heaven. Throughout, eating is presented as a way of enacting fidelity between persons, between people and fellow creatures, and between people and Earth. Food and Faith demonstrates that eating is of profound economic, moral, and spiritual significance. Revised throughout, this edition includes a new introduction and two chapters, as well as updated bibliography. The additions add significantly to the core idea of creaturely membership and hospitality through discussion of the microbiome revolution in science, and the daunting challenge of the Anthropocene.

/pdf/food-and-faith-a-theology-of-eating-c9qm92nemt.pdf

Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating

Combining insights from the disciplines of education, law, history, urban and regional planning, economics, philosophy, religion, ecology, politics and agriculture, these essays develop a sophisticated criticue of modern culture's relationship witht the land, while offering practical alternatives

The Essential Agrarian Reader : The Future of Culture, Community, and the Land

In this provocative book, Norman Wirzba argues that the doctrine of creation-as presented in the Bible and as developed through the centuries-actually holds the key to a true understanding of our place in the environment and our responsibility toward it. Wirzba contends that an adequate response to environmental destruction depends on a new formulation of ourselves as part of a larger whole, rather than as radically free individuals. Drawing on the work of biblical scholars, ecologists, agrarians, philosophers, theologians, and cultural critics, Wirzba develops a comprehensive worldview that grows out of the idea that the world is God's creation.

Norman Wirzba

Papers

Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating

The Essential Agrarian Reader : The Future of Culture, Community, and the Land

The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age:

The Essential Agrarian Reader

The paradise of God