Book reviews / Journal of Rural Studies 26 (2010) 81–8482

intensely into the narrative at all points, that ‘strong multifunction-ality’ is the agricultural holy grail, from the material that is alsoclaimed to be presented dispassionately (p. 320). The (on balance,rather brief) conclusion goes on to advocate multifunctionality asa philosophy, theory and concept (p. 327), which may be overstat-ing things a little. Interestingly here, a statement is made withwhich I wholeheartedly agree – that all agricultural systems havealways exhibited multifunctional tendencies. Notwithstandingthe point about ‘multifunctionality quality’, I was left wonderingwhether students who had waded through the volume in searchof a new paradigm of agricultural change would, after readingthis statement, end up defining multifunctionality as a broken-mouthed sheep in contemporary wolf’s clothing.

References

Ambler-Edwards, S., et al., 2009. Food Futures: Rethinking UK Strategy. ChathamHouse, Royal Institute of International Affairs, London.

Argent, N., 2002. From pillar to post? In search of the post-productivist countrysidein Australia. Australian Geographer 33, 97–114.

Evans, N., Morris, C., Winter, M., 2002. Conceptualising agriculture: a critique ofpost-productivism as the new orthodoxy. Progress in Human Geography 26,313–332.

Mather, A., Hill, G., Nijnik, M., 2006. Post-productivism and rural land use: cul desac or challenge for theorisation? Journal of Rural Studies 22, 441–455.

Wilson, G., 2001. From productivism to post-productivism . and back again?Exploring the (un)changed natural and mental landscapes of European agricul-ture. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 26, 77–102.

Nick EvansCentre for Rural Research, Department of Geography,

Institute of Science and the Environment, University of Worcester,Henwick Road, Worcester, WR2 6AJ, United Kingdom

E-mail address: n.evans@worc.ac.uk

doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2009.10.001

Global Governance of Food Production and Consumption: Issuesand Challenges, P. Oosterveer, Edward Elgar p. 304, £75hbk(2007), ISBN: 978 1 84542 938 6

How do we govern ourselves sustainably? The answer, accord-ing to Peter Oosterveer, is with great difficulty. Oosterveer’s book,Global Governance of Food Production and Consumption: Issues andChallenges, argues that the old state-centered science-based gover-nance structure is unable to deal with the new complexities ofglobalized food production and trade. He characterizes the presentas ‘‘complex modernity’’, fundamentally different in its functioningfrom the ‘‘simple modernity’’ of the past that was based on scienceand the central state as regulator. The result in the past was rela-tively safe food and some amount of environmental protection,but that is no longer possible today. In response, new forms ofgovernance have emerged that promise to meet the challengesof this new complex food production system.

Oosterveer, using the ideas of John Urry and Manuel Castells,sees these new governance structures as two-fold in their proce-dures. The first utilizes the ‘‘space of place’’ to localize and territo-rialize governance at some scale, from the nation to theneighborhood. The second intervenes in the ‘‘space of flows’’ insert-ing control into commodity chains. Using four case studies of globalfood governance – Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE),genetically modified (GM) foods, farmed seafood and labeling –he looks at how well these two modes of non-state or semi-stategovernance do in terms of consumer and environmental protection.

In the BSE case study, Oosterveer demonstrates the inability ofcentral state structures and scientific expert knowledge to maintain

food safety. He shows how industrialized livestock systems basedon global flows of feed ingredients and meat products is beyondthe reach of government controls, either through national statesor through EU multilevel governance. In the BSE case, scientistsand governments worked to assure consumers that beef was safe– that the bovine form of the disease was not transferable tohumans – until some real human cases of Creutzfeldt–JakobDisease interrupted this story with the facts. The rest of the casestudy describes governments scrambling to institute protectionsfor consumers – either through inspecting cattle, regulating feedingredients or both. He shows that neither of these options are trulyprotective; in a system as complex as the livestock and feed indus-tries today, BSE can realistically slip through these networks. TheBSE case shows a system that is broken, both in Europe and inthe rest of the world. Both government and science were de-legit-imized in the eyes of the public (although more so in some coun-tries than others). As a result, the question of how to adequatelyprotect consumers from BSE risk is still up in the air.

The GM case shows the rise of civil society actors, particularly inEurope, as a new powerful presence in food governance.Consumers in Europe have strongly resisted the import of GMfoods into their countries, despite initial government support forthis technology. The rise of consumer power has meant that tradi-tional government regulatory decisionmakers have had to becomemore open to non-expert input, including types of knowledge notbased on certain scientific ‘‘proof’’. In this case, Oosterveer showsthat the rise of the civil society actor in global food governancehas sometimes led to the adoption of the precautionary principle,regulation based on the uncertainty of knowledge over regulationbased on certain and proven facts. Yet, the case also shows thatnew forms of global trade regulations – flows – can also impactgovernment decisionmaking. As a result, the European govern-ments are caught in the middle between resistant consumersand the geopolitics of litigious trading partners – and their govern-ments – set on breaking down regulatory barriers against GMfoods in Europe.

The fish and labeling case studies feature the rise of NGOs andindustry organizations in new forms of global governance. Inboth cases, these organizations attempt to control and certifyparticular kinds of food production, forming new relationsbetween producers and consumers. Oosterveer’s detailed andcareful analysis shows how difficult, and even contradictory,these attempts by civil society actors to control global flowstend to be. How to create a truly sustainable seafood productionsystem is a question that is particularly unresolved and, perhaps,unresolvable.

Oosterveer makes his case with a tightness of argument anddepth of analysis that is admirable. One might disagree, however,with the idea that central state government has become ineffective,leaving civil society actors and private industry regulation to main-tain legitimacy with consumers. Oosterveer doesn’t say as much,but his constant reference to the delegitimization of state technoc-racies leaves one with a neoliberal aftertaste. One can ask inresponse: how much of the problem is a broken government andhow much is simply bad government? How much should we relyon civil society actors, who are not necessarily representative of‘‘the public’’, that is, not duly elected by anyone? Are private orga-nizations supported by a small group of members any more trust-worthy in their public role than bureaucrats or scientists?Oosterveer doesn’t address these questions. What he does address,however, are some very in-depth issues concerning whether thesenew forms of governance – trustworthy or no – can be effective. Theanswer, he concludes, is that we need both old and new forms ofgovernance to work together. Hopefully, this means good oldgovernment and trustworthy forms of private governance. He

Book reviews / Journal of Rural Studies 26 (2010) 81–84 83

doesn’t show us how that can happen, but he shows us clearly thatthis is the challenge we face.

E. Melanie DuPuisDepartment of Sociology, University of California, 206 College Eight,

Santa Cruz, CA 95064, United StatesE-mail address: emdupuis@ucsc.edu

doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2009.10.002

Transnational agrarian movements confronting globalization,Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Marc Edelman, Cristobal Kay (Eds.).Wiley-Blackwell (2008). 362 pp., £19.99 pbk, ISBN: 978-1-4051-9041-1

Transnational Agrarian Movements Confronting Globalization isa volume in which a number of research papers on transnationalAgrarian movements are presented from a global perspective. Theparticular aim of this volume is to introduce the readers to thepeasants and farmers who struggle at home and traverse nationalborders to challenge the World Trade Organization (WTO) andother powerful global institutions. The foreword of this volume iswritten by H. Bernstein and T. J. Byres who were the editors ofthe Journal of Peasant Studies and then the Journal of AgrarianChange in which most of the papers were published.

The volume explores the issue of ‘confronting globalization’ inthe context of South America (such as Brazil and Mexico), Asia(China, India, Philippines, Indonesia and Burma), and Africa (SouthAfrica). The introductory paper written by S M Borras Jr, M. Edel-man and C. Kay presents a brief history of global transnationalagrarian movements and explains their socio-economic, culturaland geographical consequences. The authors describe somecommon issues, claims and agendas, and explain the ideologicaland political differences of these movements and their strategies.This discussion is generally interesting and represents useful back-ground evidence for the reader. I agree with their view that it isdifficult to compile the whole range of socio-economic andcultural factors of these movements in a global context though Istill feel that the readers may spot gaps in insight relating to Asiancountries such as Vietnam, Thailand, and Bangladesh. In secondchapter, P. McMichael describes how peasants make their ownhistory. He accurately mentions how capitalist modernity andthe WTO, IFM and EU in particular impacts on the movement. Itis true that Marxist ideology played a significant role but thismovement was interrupted by state politics where capitalistaggression was more successful. I would argue that the food secu-rity programme could not give freedom to the peasants but ratherthey became dependants on external institutions such as WTOand IFM. The peasant movements still exist in those Asian coun-tries where many agrarian issues such as land reform are notresolved yet.

From chapter three to eleven, the volume includes nine casestudy papers with examples of country contexts and themes ofthe agrarian movements. Within these papers the authors intro-duce a number of agrarian movements and show how these wereconfronted with processes of globalization. Peasants and global-ization is a debate for the ‘agrarian question’ from its earlyformulation in the late 19th century (Akram-Lodhi & Kay,2008). Central America was one of the key zones where contem-porary transnational peasant organizations emerged in theperiod from late 1980s to the mid-1990s (Chapter 3). A numberof movements were started in the international arenas such asthe Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform (GCAR) by La via

Campesina (Chapter 4), peasant networks and grassroots organi-zations in Brazil and South Africa (Chapter 5), and those mobi-lizing against genetically modified crops in India, South Africaand Brazil (Chapter 6). Chapter seven to eleven considersdifferent facets of agrarian movements such as issues of tradeand biotechnology in Latin America (Chapter 7), environmentalmovements in Indonesia (Chapter 8), local production fordistance consumers (Chapter 9), migrant organization and home-town impacts in Mexico (Chapter 10) and everyday politics inChina (Chapter 11). Most of these papers look at how these kindsof movements were run and affected by globalization at nationaland international political scales. In general these authors tend toanalyse the common influencing factors when comparing globalimpacts across countries, often at the expense of recognisingthe political, cultural and social circumstances that might differ-entiate them. A very interesting paper concludes the volume. Itsauthor K. Malseed shows how agrarian movements were inter-rupted by the military government in Burma and providessome guidelines as to how the peasants of Burma can initiatea movement for their freedom.

This volume contains a number of interesting areas of debatesurrounding transnational agrarian movements confronting global-ization. Nevertheless the editors miss one opportunity to put a briefconcluding chapter with a synthesising analysis, bringing out theconnections between the chapters. Notwithstanding this, thebook will be a useful reference and source for those students andresearchers working on these issues across the humanities andsocial sciences.

M. Rezaul IslamUNESCO Centre for Comparative Education Research,

School of Education, University of Nottingham,Wollaton Road,

Nottingham NG8 1BB, UKE-mail address: rezauldu@gmail.com

doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2009.10.003

Alternative Food Geographies: Representation and Practice,D. Maye, L. Holloway, M. Kneafsey (Eds.). Elsevier, Oxford(2007). 358pp., £80.95 hbk, ISBN: 978-0-08-045018-6

This intelligent and thoughtful book will make compulsivereading for anyone interested in ‘local’, ‘sustainable’, ‘organic’ or‘slow’ food. These four production systems represent just some ofthe many faces of what has recently become known as the ‘alterna-tive’ food sector – and it’s a thriving industry.

It’s also a diverse industry, and it is this diversity of theory andpractice that this book deals with so well. At the heart of this editedbook is the question of ‘what is alternative’? With so many disparateapproaches to food production, consumption and marketing – from‘free-range’ to ‘organic’ and everything in between – how can wepossibly hope to identify a common version of ‘alternative’ that isacceptable to everyone?

The answer the book gives is, of course, that we can’t, because‘alternative’ food – just like its antithesis, ‘conventional’ food – isa relational concept, rather than a discrete and separate sectorthat exists in isolation from other parts of the food economy. Toquote the editors on this point: ‘‘Categorising spaces of economicactivity as part of either ‘alternative’ or ‘conventional’ systems ofsupply is too simplistic and arbitrary. Rather, we would argue thatfood provision in general is best understood in terms of the construc-tion of complex, changing and multiple sets of relationships. The