Global food systems and food security
Information from the course leader
Dear all
The course 'Global Food Systems and Food Security' starts on Thursday 23 March. The majority of lectures will be held live at SLU. Occasional lectures and seminars will be held online, transmitted through the communication tool Zoom. We will use the same Zoom link and password throughout the entire course:
Passcode: 242237
Zoom Link
https://slu-se.zoom.us/j/67099962468
The lectures will mostly be held on Mondays 10.15-12.00 and 13.15-15.00 and the seminars on Thursdays (except when an occasional lecture or seminar clashes with a holiday). However, there will also be a couple of extra lectures on Tuesdays, so please check the schedule carefully.
The first week the course will start on Thursday 23 March with an introduction at 9.15- 10.00. Then Örjan Bartholdson will hold two lectures, 10.15-12.00 and 13.15-15.00.
The first seminar will be held the next day, on Friday 24th, and will consist of a presentation of the course by the teachers and a subsequent discussion with the students.
You will be divided into either a morning or afternoon seminar group on Thursdays.
The literature will be uploaded on Canvas, except for the books that you have either to purchase or borrow. See the literature list.
Welcome!
Örjan and Kristina
Course evaluation
The course evaluation is now closed
LU0092-40064 - Course evaluation report
Once the evaluation is closed, the course coordinator and student representative have 1 month to draft their comments. The comments will be published in the evaluation report.
Additional course evaluations for LU0092
Academic year 2023/2024
Global food systems and food security (LU0092-40156)
2024-03-20 - 2024-06-02
Academic year 2021/2022
Global food systems and food security (LU0092-40119)
2022-03-24 - 2022-06-05
Academic year 2020/2021
Global food systems and food security (LU0092-40106)
2021-03-24 - 2021-06-06
Academic year 2019/2020
Global food systems and food security (LU0092-40043)
2020-03-25 - 2020-06-07
Academic year 2018/2019
Global food systems and food security (LU0092-40095)
2019-03-26 - 2019-06-09
Syllabus and other information
Syllabus
LU0092 Global food systems and food security, 15.0 Credits
Globala försörjningssystem och matsäkerhetSubjects
Rural DevelopmentEducation cycle
Master’s levelAdvanced study in the main field
A1N
Grading scale
The grade requirements within the course grading system are set out in specific criteria. These criteria must be available by the course start at the latest.
Language
EnglishPrior knowledge
Knowledge equivalent to 180 credits, including 90 credits within a particular major within humanities, social or natural sciences. Knowledge equivalent to English 6 (Swedish educational system).Objectives
The aim of this course is to provide the students with an understanding of global food chains, i.e. how food is produced, marketed, distributed and perceived at global and local levels. The course will discuss how food systems are globally interconnected while at the same time food production also is part of local sustenance. Attention will be given to issues of global equilibrium and disequilibrium in both production and consumption, with a focus on how food systems are embedded in economic, social, cultural and political environments. The course will enable students to analyze the conditions required to achieve food security and the contemporary challenges caused by climate change, as well as economic, political and social tendencies and pressures. The course will provide students with knowledge and abilities needed both in postgraduate research and in professions focusing on global food systems and food security.
After completion of the course, the student should be able to:
Understand and analyze the production and marketing of agricultural and animal products on regional and global scales; as well as how these scales are connected economically, politically and socially.
Understand and account for the historical transformation from subsistence agriculture to agro-industrialization, and its effect on agricultural producers and communities.
Understand and analyze how international political relations and the gradual internationalization of markets have affected food production, marketing, transportation and consumption.
Understand and analyze the meaning of food security, how food security is dependent on ecological, economic, political and social factors how changes in these factors influence the emergence of the right to food movement and risk jeopardizing food security.
Understand and account for social theories that aim to analyze global changes and connections of food production, marketing, transportation and consumption, such as world system theory, food regime theory and political ecology.
Content
This course introduces students to global food systems and the challenges of ensuring food security for all in a world of climate change, globalization, shifting demographies and new technologies. Food constitutes a major product in the contemporary global commodity value chain and this course provides students with analytical tools so as to be able to grasp and analyze the effects of global forces on local food production, on marketing, transportation and consumption of food. This course draws on theories and methods from sociology, social anthropology, human geography, economy, political science and agro-ecology. The course will enable students to critically analyze contexts, perspectives and the spatiality of the global food systems and food security, as well as distinct strategies of moral interventions, for example the development of certifications and the movement right to food.
Grading form
The grade requirements within the course grading system are set out in specific criteria. These criteria must be available by the course start at the latest.Formats and requirements for examination
Approved home exam, approved participation in compulsory seminars and approved written assignments.
If a student has failed an examination, the examiner has the right to issue supplementary assignments. This applies if it is possible and there are grounds to do so.
The examiner can provide an adapted assessment to students entitled to study support for students with disabilities following a decision by the university. Examiners may also issue an adapted examination or provide an alternative way for the students to take the exam.
If this syllabus is withdrawn, SLU may introduce transitional provisions for examining students admitted based on this syllabus and who have not yet passed the course.
For the assessment of an independent project (degree project), the examiner may also allow a student to add supplemental information after the deadline for submission. Read more in the Education Planning and Administration Handbook.
Other information
The right to participate in teaching and/or supervision only applies for the course instance the student was admitted to and registered on.
If there are special reasons, students are entitled to participate in components with compulsory attendance when the course is given again. Read more in the Education Planning and Administration Handbook.
Responsible department
Department of Urban and Rural Development
Further information
Litterature list
**Literature: Global Food Systems and Food Security spring semester 2023
****You will only have to purchase the books marked with a *.
**Please, note that some literature might be added to the list and some may be changed or omitted.
**Compulsory course books **
* Clapp, Jennifer. 2016. Food. Cambridge. Polity Books (2nd edition).
* * Hall, Derek. 2013. Land. Cambridge. Polity Books.
* Du Bois, Christine M. 2018. The Story of Soy. London. Reaktion Books.
* Pain, Adam & Hansen Kjell. 2019. Rural Development. London: Routledge.
Excerpts of Books:
Blanchette, Alex. Introduction and Part 1. 2020. Porkopolis. American Animality, Standardized Life & the Factory Farm. Durham. Duke University Press.
Davis, Mike. Late Victorian Holocausts. El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World. Chapter 6. Millenarian Revolutions. London. Verso. 177-210.
Gregory: The value question (chap 1: Gregory C.A. 2000: Savage Money. The Anthropology and Politics of Commodity Exchange. London: Routledge
Gould, William T. S. 2009: Chapter 6: Migration and Development. Population and Development. London: Routledge (pp 154 - 190)
Harvey, David. 2006. Notes towards a theory of uneven geographical development. Spaces of Global Capitalism. Towards a theory of uneven geographical development. London. Verso. Pages 69-116.
Hilhorst, Dorothea Chapter 1: Introduction: The politics of NGO-ing. Chapter 2: Damning the dams: Social movements and NGOsThe Real World of NGOs: discourses, diversity and development. London. ZED Books. Pages 1-50.
Karriem, Abdurazack. (2013) Space, Ecology, and Politics in the Praxis of the Brazilian Landless Movement. Gramsci, Space, Nature, Politics (eds. Ekers, Michael, Hart, Gillian, Kipfer, Stefan, Loftus, Alex). London. Wiley-Blackwell. Pages 142-160.
Lechner, Frank, J., Boli, John (2005) Chapter 7: Transforming World Culture: The anti-globalization movement as cultural critique. World Culture. Origins and Consequences. Oxford. Blackwell Publishing. Pages 153-172
McMichael, P (2013) Chapter 1-4. Food Regimes and Agrarian Questions. Agrarian Change and Peasant Studies Series, Practical Action. Fernwood Publishing.
Nützenadel, Alexander (2008) Chapter 9: A green international? Foods market and transnational politics, 1850-1914. Chapter 12: Postcolonial paradoxes: the cultural economy of African Export Agriculture. Chapter 14: Before Fair Trade Empire, Free Trade and the moral economies of food in the modern world. Food and Globalization. Consumption, Markets and Politics in the Modern World (ed. Nützenadel, Alexander, Trentmann, Frank). Oxford. Berg. 153-172, 215-234, 253-276.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. 1992. Chapter 1: O Nordeste: Sweetness and Death. Chapter 2: One hundred years without water. Chapter 4: The madness of hunger. Death without Weeping. The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Berkeley. University of California Press. Pages 31-97, 128-166.
Topik, Steven, A. Wells. (2012) *Global Markets Transformed 1870-1945. *Chapter 3: Commodity Chains. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Pages 113-259
Articles:
Bartholdson, Örjan, Porro, Roberto, Pain, Adam. (2021) Seeking One’s Fortune Elsewhere: The Social Breakdown of a Smallholder Settlement in the Brazilian Eastern Amazon and the Consequences for Its Rainforest Reserve. Forum for Development Studies. Vol. 49(1): 107-127
Benson, Peter & Fischer, Edward F. 2007. Broccoli and Desire. Antipode.
Bernstein, H., 2006. ‘Is There an Agrarian Question in the 21st Century?’ Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 26 (4): 449–60.
Borras et al 2014. Towards Understanding the Politics of Flex Crops and Commodities. Transnational Institute (TNI) Agrarian Justice Program.
Borras et al, 2016 The rise of flex crops and commodities: implications for research. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 43, 1, 93-115
Chang, Ha-Joon. 2009. Rethinking public policy in agriculture – Lessons from history, distant and recent. Journal of Peasant Studies, 36, 3, 477-515
Graeber, David. 2006. Beyond Power/Knowledge- an exploration of the relation of power, ignorance and stupidity. The Malinowski Memorial Lecture, 2006. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. Pages 105 – 128
Gupta, Akhil 1995: Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics, and the Imagined State. American Ethnologist 22.
Kusakabe, Kyoko, Chanthoumphone, Chatahavisth. 2021. Transition From Subsistence Agriculture to Rubber Plantations in Northern Laos: Analysis of Household Livelihood Strategies by Ethnicity and Gender. SAGE Open. Pages 1-13.
Land, T (2010) Crisis? What Crisis? The Normality of the Current Food Crisis. Journal of Agrarian Change, 10 (1): 87-97’
Lund, Christian 2006: Twilight Institutions: Public Authority and Local Politics in Africa. Development and Change 37
Marquardt K, Pain A, Bartholdson Ö and L Romero Rengifo (2019). Forest dynamics in the Peruvian Amazon – understanding processes of change. Small-scale Forestry. 18(1), pp 81-104. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-018-9408-3
Marquardt K, Pain A and Khatri D B (2020). Re-reading Nepalese landscapes: labour, water, farming patches and trees. Forests, Trees and Livelihoods: 29:4. 238-259.
DOI:10.1080/14728028.2020.1814875
Marschke, Melissa, Vandergeest, Peter, Havice, Elizabeth, Kadfak, Alin, Duker, Peter, Isopescu, Ilinca, MacDonnell, Mallor. 2020. COVID-19, instability and migrant fish workers in Asia. Maritime Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-020-00205-y
Minola, Giulia & Adam Pain 2015: Peeling the Onion. Social Regulation on the Onion Market, Nangarhar, Afghanistan. Economic & Political Weekly, febr. 2015.
Pain, Adam, Marquardt, Kristina, Lindh, Arvid, Hasselquist, Niles J. What Is Secondary about Secondary Tropical Forest? Rethinking Forest Landscapes. Human Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-020-00203-y
Rigg, Jonathan, Salamanca, Albert, Thompson, Eric. 2016. The puzzle of East and Southeast Asia's persistent smallholder.Journal of. Rural Studies., 43, pp. 118-133
Röös, Elin, et al. 2018. Defining a land boundary for sustainable livestock consumption. Global Change Biology. No. 24: 4185-4194
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.14321
Sunam, Ramesh. 2017. In Search of Pathways out of Poverty: Mapping the Role of International Labour Migration, Agriculture and Rural Labour. Journal of Agrarian Change. Vol. 17 (1): 67–80
Thompson M and Warburton M (1985). Uncertainty on a Himalayan Scale. Mountain Research and Development, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 115-135.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3673250
Tsing, Anna. 2012. Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species for Donna Haraway. Environmental Humanities. Vol.1: 141-154