ABSTRACT
The discussion in Part II has explored the much-heralded but still largely unrealized transition from globalized, “faceless and placeless,” industrial food systems toward more territorialized rural economies and food networks built on “alternative” eco-social values of sustainability, provenance, animal welfare, and localized provisioning. As we have seen, these ethical and esthetic values infuse the main currents of contemporary food politics, underpinning shared producer–consumer knowledges and their “communities of practice” and carving out new economic and cultural spaces for organic agriculture, quality foods, and innovative forms of direct provisioning. We have also traced the many resistances and challenges to transition and paradigm change encountered in different arenas, from the halting process of the Common Agricultural policy (CAP) reform to adaptive corporate retail strategies that uphold the cultural authority of industrial food systems and their central place in the social infrastructures of household food provisioning.
