Alternative Food Politics

Michelle Phillipov is a lecturer in Media at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Her work explores how media’s intensified interest in the provenance of food and the ethics of food production is shaping public debate, consumer politics, and media and food industry practices. Katherine Kirkwood is a PhD candidate at the Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Her research investigates popular culture’s relationship with everyday Australian food culture and how media and cultural texts inform and shape Australians’ approach to food, their culinary interests and concerns.

Introduction: Thinking 'With' Media: Margins, Mainstreams and the Media Politics of Food PART 1: Limits and Paradoxes 1. The (Continuing) Paradox of the Organic Label: Reflections on US Trajectories in the Era of Mainstreaming 2. Mainstreaming New Nordic Cuisine? Alternative Food Politics and the Problems of Scale Jumping and Scale Bending 3. When Carrots Become Posh: Untangling the Relationship Between ‘Heritage’ Foods and Social Distinction PART 2: New Political Platforms 4. Promising Sustainable Foods: Entrepreneurial Visions of Sustainable Food Futures 5. The Welcome Dinner Project: Food Hospitality Activism and Digital Media 6. Food sovereignty: Deep Histories, Digital Activism and the Emergence of a Transnational Public PART 3: Personal Food Politics and Entanglements 7. It’s Not (Just) About the F-ckin’ Animals: How Veganism is Changing, and Why that Matters 8. Vitalities and Visceralities: Alternative Body/Food Politics in Digital Media 9. The Ethical Masquerade: (Un)masking Mechanisms of Power Behind ‘Ethical’ Meat PART 4: Reframing Production and Consumption 10. The Consumer Labelling Turn in Farmed Animal Welfare Politics: From the Margins of Animal Advocacy to Mainstream Supermarket Shelves 11. Confronting Food Waste in MasterChef Australia: Media Production and Recalcitrant Matter 12. Supermarkets, Celebrity Chefs and Private Labels: The ‘Alternative’ Reframing of Processed Foods