This collection breaks new ground by investigating applications of degrowth in a range of geographic, practical and theoretical contexts along the food chain. Degrowth challenges growth and advocates for everyday practices that limit socio-metabolic energy and material flows within planetary constraints. As such, the editors intend to map possibilities for food for degrowth to become established as a field of study.
International contributors offer a range of examples and possibilities to develop more sustainable, localised, resilient and healthy food systems using degrowth principles of sufficiency, frugal abundance, security, autonomy and conviviality. Chapters are clustered in parts that critically examine food for degrowth in spheres of the household, collectives, networks, and narratives of broader activism and discourses. Themes include broadening and deepening concepts of care in food provisioning and social contexts; critically applying appropriate technologies; appreciating and integrating indigenous perspectives; challenging notions of 'waste', 'circular economies' and commodification; and addressing the ever-present impacts of market logic framed by growth.
This book will be of greatest interest to students and scholars of critical food studies, sustainability studies, urban political ecology, geography, environmental studies such as environmental sociology, anthropology, ethnography, ecological economics and urban design and planning.
Anitra Nelson is an activist-scholar, Honorary Principal Fellow and Associate Professor in the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne (Australia). Her works include Exploring Degrowth: A Critical Guide (co-author 2020), Housing For Degrowth: Principles, Practices, Challenges and Opportunities (co-editor, 2018), Small is Necessary: Shared Living on a Shared Planet (author, 2018) and Life Without Money: Building Fair and Sustainable Economies (co-editor, 2011).
Ferne Edwards is Postdoctoral Fellow in Socially and Environmentally Just Transitions, Department of Design, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway. Previously Research Fellow, RMIT University Centre for Urban Research (Melbourne, Australia) and Work Package Lead of the EU EdiCitNet project at RMIT Europe (Barcelona, Spain), Ferne is a cultural anthropologist researching edible cities, food waste, urban beekeeping, non-monetary food economies and food sharing.
