Overview

Written to mark the tenth anniversary of the UNESCO Chair in World Food Systems, this multidisciplinary collection of short, digestible expert essays offers a uniquely rounded introduction to the key contemporary issues around sustainable nutrition. The book consists of a clear, five-part structure in which economists, historians, sociologists, physical biologists, and others present a series of reflections on what food is, how it functions in our socieities, how we understand it, and how this has changed over time. Along the way, we discover how current global policies and agro-practices feed into all of this, and we find that reconsidering our nutrition amounts to reconsidering our societies. All authors are leaders in their fields, and all hail from the research organizations that co-lead the UNESCO Chair, including CIRAD, INRAE, Institut Agro, IRD and Ciheam-IAMM, making this an ideal introductory resource for postgraduates, practitioners, and others interested in food studies and global food systems. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

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9781350544956

Table of Contents

Reviews

The Ecology of Food presents food as a ’total social fact’, as 'an encounter with the world… the entire world’. It situates food at the intersection of a range of social, cultural, economic, political and environmental potential inflection points, and as such seeks to install in readers a well informed enthusiasm for food systems transformation. This is a hopeful text in a time of many challenges. * Jane Battersby, University of Cape Town, South Africa *

Author Information

Nicolas Bricas is the director of the UNESCO Chair on World Food Systems at Montpellier SupAgro and CIRAD, the French agricultural research and international cooperation organization working for the sustainable development of tropical and Mediterranean regions. In this role, he leads research programs and training sessions on Sustainable Urban Food System and policies in France and Africa. He is also a member of the IPES-Food panel and an expert in the socio-economics of food systems. His main research interests are in the effects of rapid urbanization, industrialization, and liberalization on food systems and food styles in Africa and Asia. Damien Conaré is the Secretary General of the UNESCO Chair in World Food Systems at the International Centre for Higher Education in Agricultural Sciences (SupAgro) in Montpellier, France. He works to increase and disseminate academic and empirical knowledge on world food systems, and particularly urban food systems, while emphasizing their diversity, their dynamics, and their human and environmental impacts from the standpoint of sustainable development. Marie Walser is Project Manager at the UNESCO Chair in World Food at the Agro Institute, Montpellier SupAgro. Walser is an agricultural engineer with research interests in world agricultural food systems and their environmental and human impacts.

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