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Food politics and development
This review article examines the intricate relationship between food and sustainable, equitable development, positing that this relationship is fundamentally political. It presents various frameworks for understanding food politics, grounded in theoretical traditions of power analysis, including: food interests and incentives; food regimes; food institutions; food innovation systems; food contentions and movements; food discourses; and food socio-natures. The article illustrates these frameworks through specific problematics, offering a selective overview of significant literature in food politics and development. It discusses the state’s role and state-society relations within different food regimes, the influence of science and technology on agricultural and food policy, and the dynamics of rural livelihoods within agri-food systems, culminating in an examination of the politics surrounding inclusive structural transformation. Expanding the focus beyond agri-food systems, the review critiques prevailing narratives of nutrition and analyzes the cultural politics of food and eating. The concluding section synthesizes findings across various case studies, integrating approaches to power and politics through a comprehensive analytical framework. This framework elucidates diverse pathways of change and intervention while posing critical inquiries regarding their distributional effects and the degree of democratic participation in food-related decision-making. The authors advocate for the ‘4D’ approach to illuminate current inequities within food systems and explore political avenues for future transformations. They suggest that this interdisciplinary framework could inform a future research agenda to foster engaged scholarship in food politics. [NPID: Politics, equitable, food systems, policy]
Year: 2020
