Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:05:01.811Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Hegemony, Counter-Hegemony and Food Systems Literacy: Transforming the Global Industrial Food System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 May 2019

Nicholas Rose*
Affiliation:
William Angliss Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Izo Lourival
Affiliation:
Invest Victoria, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Abstract

National and global food systems are beset by intersecting and mutually reinforcing crises of public and ecological health. The locus of these crises resides primarily in the excessive concentration of corporate power and control. Deploying a Gramscian theory of politics as a contribution to the ongoing development of a critical food-based environmental education pedagogy, this article argues that transformative change requires the mass exercise of food citizenship directed towards the realisation of a socially just and ecologically sustainable food system, as contemplated by the principles of food sovereignty. The article argues further that food citizenship in turn presupposes levels of engagement and motivation that will only come from processes of transformative learning and critical consciousness-raising through an emerging form of environmental education: critical food systems literacy.

Type
Feature Articles
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Altieri, M.A., & Toledo, V.M. (2011). The agroecological revolution in Latin America: Rescuing nature, ensuring food sovereignty and empowering peasants. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38, 587612. doi: 10.1080/03066150.2011.582947CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alvaredo, F., Chancel, L., Piketty, T., Saez, E., & Zucman, G. (2017). Global inequality dynamics: New findings from WID.world. American Economic Review, 107, 404409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ayers, J.A. (2008). Gramsci, political economy and international relations theory: Modern princes and naked emperors. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Azevedo Perry, E., Thomas, H., Samra, H.R., Edmonstone, S., Davidson, L., Faulkner, A., Kirkpatrick, S.I. (2017). Identifying attributes of food literacy: A scoping review. Public Health Nutrition, 20, 24062415.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bello, W.F. (2009). The food wars. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Berry, T. (1999). The great work: Our way into the future. New York, NY: Bell Tower.Google Scholar
Birchfield, V. (1999). Contesting the hegemony of market ideology: Gramsci’s ‘Good Sense’ and Polanyi’s ‘Double-Movement’. Review of International Political Economy, 6, 2754.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Booth, S., & Coveney, J. (2015). Food democracy: From consumer to food citizen. Singapore: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brambila-Macias, J., Shankar, B., Capacci, S., Mazzocchi, M., Perez-Cueto, F.J., Verbeke, W., & Traill, W.B. (2011). Policy interventions to promote healthy eating: A review of what works, what does not, and what is promising. Food and Nutrition Bulletin, 32, 365375.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Breunig, M. (2014). Food for thought: An analysis of pro-environmental behaviours and food choices in Ontario environmental studies programs. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 18, 155172.Google Scholar
Carrara, A., & Schulz, P.J. (2018). The role of health literacy in predicting adherence to nutritional recommendations: A systematic review. Patient Education and Counseling, 101, 1624.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clark, P. (2016). Can the state foster food sovereignty? Insights from the case of Ecuador. Journal of Agrarian Change, 16, 183205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colchero, M.A., Rivera-Dommarco, J., Popkin, B.M., & Ng, S.W. (2017). In Mexico, evidence of sustained consumer response two years after implementing a sugar-sweetened beverage tax. Health Affairs, 36, 564–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Costanza, R., de Groot, R., Sutton, P., van der Ploeg, S., Anderson, S.A., Kubiszewski, I., Turner, R.K. (2014). Changes in the global value of ecosystem services. Global Environmental Change, 26, 152158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crosley, K.L. (2013). Advancing the boundaries of urban environmental education through the food justice movement. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 18, 4658.Google Scholar
Cullen, T., Hatch, J., Martin, W., Higgins, J.W., & Sheppard, R. (2015). Food literacy: Definition and framework for action. Canadian Journal of Dietetic Practice and Research, 76, 140145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davila, F., & Dyball, R. (2015). Transforming food systems through food sovereignty: An Australian urban context. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 31, 3445.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Desmarais, A.A. (2007). Globalization and the power of peasants: La Via Campesina. Halifax, Canada: Fernwood Publishing.Google Scholar
Donati, K., Cleary, S., & Pike, L. (2009). Bodies, bugs and dirt: Sustainability re-imagined in community gardens. In Lawrence, G., Lyons, K., and Wallington, T. (Eds.), Food security, nutrition, and sustainability (pp. 207222). London: Earthscan.Google Scholar
Farmar-Bowers, Q., Higgins, V., & Millar, J. (Eds.). (2012). Food security in Australia: Challenges and prospects for the future. New York: Springer Science & Business Media.Google Scholar
Francese, J. (2008). Perspectives on Gramsci: Politics, culture and social theory. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing.Google Scholar
Friedmann, H., & McMichael, P. (1989). Agriculture and the state system: The rise and fall of national agricultures, 1870 to the present. Sociologia Ruralis, 29, 93117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giroux, H.A. (2010). Rethinking education as the practice of freedom: Paulo Freire and the promise of critical pedagogy. Policy Futures in Education, 8, 715721.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goda, T., Onaran, Ö., & Stockhammer, E. (2017). Income inequality and wealth concentration in the recent crisis. Development and Change, 48, 327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks (edited & translated by Hoare, Q. & Smith, G.N.). New York, NY: International Publishers.Google Scholar
Hall, S. (1987). Gramsci and us. Marxism Today, June, 1621.Google Scholar
Harris, C.E., & Barter, B.G. (2015). Pedagogies that explore food practices: Resetting the table for improved eco-justice. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 31, 1233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hassanein, N. (2003). Practicing food democracy: A pragmatic politics of transformation. Journal of Rural Studies, 19, 7786.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Head, L. (2017). Hope and grief in the Anthropocene: Reconceptualising human-nature relations. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hickel, J. (2016). The true extent of global poverty and hunger: Questioning the good news narrative of the Millennium Development Goals. Third World Quarterly, 37, 119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hickel, J. (2017). Addressing the structural causes of world suffering. In Anderson, R. (Ed.), Alleviating world suffering (vol. 67, pp. 210). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holt-Gimenez, E. (2017). A foodie’s guide to capitalism: Understanding the political economy of what we eat. New York, NY: NYU Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howard, P.H. (2016). Concentration and power in the food system: Who controls what we eat? London: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
IPES-Food. (2017a). Unravelling the food–health nexus: Addressing practices, political economy, and power relations to build healthier food systems. The Global Alliance for the Future of Food and IPES-Food. Retrieved from www.ipes-food.orgGoogle Scholar
IPES-Food. (2017b). Too big to feed: Exploring the impacts of mega-mergers, concentration, concentration of power in the agri-food sector. Retrieved from www.ipes-food.orgGoogle Scholar
Ives, P. (2004). Gramsci’s politics of language: Engaging the Bakhtin Circle and the Frankfurt School. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Janssen, H., Davies, I., Richardson, L., & Stevenson, L. (2017). Determinants of takeaway and fast food consumption: A narrative review. Nutrition Research Reviews, 31(1), 119. doi: 10.1017/S0954422417000178Google ScholarPubMed
Kimura, A. (2011). Food education as food literacy: Privatized and gendered food knowledge in contemporary Japan. Journal of the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society, 28, 465482.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knox, M. (2015). Supermarket monsters: The price of Coles and Woolworths’ dominance. Melbourne, Australia: Black Inc.Google Scholar
Lang, T., & Heasman, M. (2004). Food wars: The global battle for minds, mouths and markets. London: Earthscan.Google Scholar
Lawrence, G., Richards, C., Gray, I., & Hansar, N. (2012). Climate change and the resilience of commodity food production in Australia. In Rosin, C., Stock, P., and Campbell, H. (Eds.), Food systems failure: The global food crisis and the future of agriculture (pp. 131146). Abingdon, UK: Earthscan.Google Scholar
Leung, T.L.F., & Poulin, R. (2008). Parasitism, commensalism and mutualism: Exploring the many shades of symbiosis. Life and Environment, 58, 107115.Google Scholar
Levkoe, C.Z., & Sheedy, A. (2017). A people-centred approach to food policy making: Lessons from Canada’s People’s Food Policy project. Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition, 121. doi: 10.1080/19320248.2017.1407724Google Scholar
Lewis, C. (2009). Making sense of common sense: A framework for tracking hegemony. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 9, 277292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lozano-Cabedo, C., & Gomez-Benito, C. (2017). A theoretical model of food citizenship for the analysis of social praxis. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 30, 122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McMichael, P. (2009). A food regime analysis of the ‘World Food Crisis’. Agriculture and Human Values, 26, 281295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNally, M. (2009). Gramsci’s internationalism, the national-popular and the alternative globalisation movement. In McNally, M., and Schwarzmantel, J. (Eds.), Gramsci and global politics: Hegemony and resistance (pp. 5875). Oxford, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Martin, J., & Peeters, A. (2017). Tipping the scales: Australian obesity prevention consensus. Melbourne, Australia: Obesity Policy Coalition and The Global Obesity Centre. Retrieved from https://chf.org.au/sites/default/files/tipping-the-scales.pdfGoogle Scholar
Massy, C. (2017). Call of the reed warbler: A new agriculture, a new Earth. Brisbane, Australia: University of Queensland Press.Google Scholar
Meyer, G. (2017, July 13). Cargill profits boosted by growing global appetite for meat. Financial Times. Retrieved from https://www.ft.com/content/c4c0c184-5ce5-312f-b944-641d6675ba14Google Scholar
Moore, J.W. (2015). Capitalism in the web of life: Ecology and the accumulation of capital. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Nutbeam, D. (2000). Health literacy as a public health goal: A challenge for contemporary health education and communication strategies into the 21st century. Health Promotion International, 15, 259267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nutbeam, D. (2008). The evolving concept of health literacy. Social Science & Medicine, 67, 20722078.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
O’Kane, G. (2016). A moveable feast: Exploring barriers and enablers to food citizenship. Appetite, 105, 674687.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Palumbo, R. (2016). Sustainability of well-being through literacy. The effects of food literacy on sustainability of well-being. Agriculture and Agricultural Science Procedia, 8, 99106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parker, C., & Scrinis, G. (2014). Out of the cage and into the barn: Supermarket power food system governance and the regulation of free range eggs. Griffith Law Review, 23, 318347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patel, R., & Moore, J.W. (2017). A history of the world in seven cheap things: A guide to capitalism, nature, and the future of the planet. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Plume, K. (2017, 5 April). Monsanto second-quarter profit jumps on strong demand for seeds. Reuters. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-monsanto-results/monsanto-second-quarter-profitjumps-on-strong-demand-for-seeds-idUSKBN1771ITGoogle Scholar
Ramankutty, N., Mehrabi, Z., Waha, K., Jarvis, L., Kremen, C., Herrero, M., & Rieseberg, L.H. (2018). Trends in global agricultural land use: Implications for environmental health and food security. Annual Review of Plant Biology, 61, 14.114.27.Google Scholar
Raworth, K. (2017). A doughnut for the Anthropocene: Humanity’s compass in the 21st century. The Lancet Planetary Health, 1, 4849.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Renting, H., Schermer, M., & Rossi, A. (2012). Building food democracy: Exploring civic food networks and newly emerging forms of food citizenship. International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food, 19, 289307.Google Scholar
Richards, C., Lawrence, G., Loong, M., & Burch, D. (2012). A toothless chihuahua? The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, neoliberalism and supermarket power in Australia. Rural Society, 21, 250263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, N. (ed.). (2015). Fair Food: Stories from a Movement Changing the World. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press.Google Scholar
Rose, N., & Gaynor, A. (eds.). (2018). Reclaiming the Urban Commons: The past, present and future of food growing in Australian towns and cities. Perth: University of Western Australia Publishing.Google Scholar
Rowley, S., & Leishman, C. (2017, 2 August). Affordable housing shortfall leaves 1.3 million households in need and rising — study. The Conversation. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/affordable-housing-shortfall-leaves-1-3m-households-in-need-andrising-study-80965.Google Scholar
Sacks, G., Swinburn, B.A., & Lawrence, M.A. (2008). A systematic policy approach to changing the food system and physical activity environments to prevent obesity. Australia and New Zealand Health Policy, 5, 13. doi: 10.1186/1743-8462-5-13.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sayer, A. (2015). Why we can’t afford the rich. London: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Schwarzkopf, S. (2018). Consumer-citizens: Markets, marketing and the making of ‘choice’. In Kravets, O., Maclaran, P., Miles, S., and Venkatesh, A. (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of consumer culture (pp. 435452). London: Sage Publications.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slater, J. (2017). Food literacy: A critical tool in a complex foodscape. Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences, 109, 1420.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stapleton, S.R. (2015). Food, identity and environmental education. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 20, 1224.Google Scholar
Stout, L. (2015, April 16). Corporations don’t have to maximize profits. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-arecorporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profitsGoogle Scholar
Sullivan, K. (2017, October 11). Right to farm: Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance slams ‘bizarre’ plan. The Weekly Times. Retrieved from https://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/news/national/right-to-farm-australian-foodsovereignty-alliance-slams-bizarre-plan/news-story/39beb5d81b0d58264fee9f12385de621Google Scholar
Sumner, J. (2008). Eating as a pedagogical act: Food as a catalyst for adult education for sustainable development. In Thinking Beyond Borders: Global Ideas, Global Values, Proceedings of the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education (CASAE) (pp. 352356). Retrieved from http://casae-aceea.ca/~casae/sites/casae/archives/cnf2008/OnlineProceedings-2008/CAS2008-Sumner.pdfGoogle Scholar
Sumner, J. (2013). Food literacy and adult education: Learning to read the world by eating. The Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education, 25, 7992.Google Scholar
Sumner, J. (2015). Reading the world: Food literacy and the potential for food system transformation. Studies in the Education of Adults, 47, 128141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swan, E., & Flowers, R. (2015). Clearing up the table: Food pedagogies and environmental education — Contributions, challenges and future agendas. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 31, 146164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swinburn, B.A., Sacks, G., Hall, K.D., McPherson, K., Finegood, D.T., Moodie, M.L., & Gortmaker, S.L. (2011). The global obesity pandemic: Shaped by global drivers and local environments. The Lancet, 378, 804814.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tilman, D., & Clark, M. (2014). Global diets link environmental sustainability and human health. Nature, 515, 518522.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Truman, E., Lane, D., & Elliott, C. (2017). Defining food literacy: A scoping review. Appetite, 116, 365371. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2017.05.007CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
United Nations. (2005). Ecosystems and human well-being: Synthesis, millennium ecosystems assessment. Retrieved from http://www.millenniumassessment.org/documents/document.356.aspx.pdfGoogle Scholar
Vidgen, H. (2016). Food literacy: Key concepts for health and education. New York, NY: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vidgen, H., & Gallegos, D. (2014). Defining food literacy and its components. Appetite, 76, 5059.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vivero-Pol, J.L. (2017). Food as Commons or Commodity? Exploring the links between normative valuations and agency in food transition. Sustainability, 9, 442.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walsh-Dilley, M., Wolford, W., & McCarthy, J. (2016). Rights for resilience: Food sovereignty, power, and resilience in development practice. Ecology and Society, 21, 11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walter, P. (2013). Theorising Community Gardens as Pedagogical Sites in the Food Movement. Environmental Education Research, 19, 521539.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiler, A.M., Hergesheimer, C., Brisbois, B., Wittman, H., Yassi, A., & Spiegel, J.M. (2014). Food sovereignty, food security and health equity: A meta-narrative mapping exercise. Health Policy and Planning, 30, 10781092.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weis, T. (2010). The accelerating biophysical contradictions of industrial capitalist agriculture. Journal of Agrarian Change, 10, 315341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Willett, W., Rockström, J., Loken, B., Springmann, M., Lang, T., Vermeulen, S., Garnett, T., Tilman, D., DeClerck, F., Wood, A. and Jonell, M. (2019). Food in the Anthropocene: The EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems. The Lancet, 393, 447492.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Williams, R. (1973). Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory. New Left Review, 82, 316.Google Scholar
Willis, O. (2017, 12 October). What you need to know about the health star rating on foods. ABC News. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2017-10-12/what-you-need-toknow-about-the-health-star-rating-on-foods/9040200Google Scholar
Wittman, H. (2010). Reconnecting agriculture and the environment: Food sovereignty and the agrarian basis of ecological citizenship. In Wittman, H., Desmarais, A.A., and Wiebe, N. (Eds.), Food sovereignty: Reconnecting food, nature and community (pp. 91104). Black Point, Canada: Fernwood Publishing.Google Scholar