ABSTRACT
Books such as Coming Home to Eat (Nabhan 2002) and Eat Here (Halweil 2004) represent a resounding clarion call among alternative food system advocates. This activist discourse, with its discussion of “foodsheds” and the problems of “food miles,” makes strong connections between the localization of food systems and the promotion of environmental sustainability and social justice. In food activist narratives, the local tends to be framed as the space or context where ethical norms and values can flourish, and so localism becomes inextricably part of the explanation for the rise of alternative, and more sustainable, “good” food networks. In Europe, (re-)localization has become integral to efforts to preserve livelihoods, traditional farmed landscapes and rural her it age. In each case, although for different reasons, the local has become “beautiful,” as was “small” (“pluriactive” in Europe) in the 1970s and 1980s, and “organic” (“multifunctional”) in the 1990s and 2000s.
