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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > General
Agrarian social movements are at a crossroads. Although these
movements have made significant strides in advancing the concept of
food sovereignty, the reality is that many of their members remain
engaged in environmentally degrading forms of agriculture, and the
lands they farm are increasingly unproductive. Whether movement
farmers will be able to remain living on the land, and dedicated to
alternative agricultural practices, is a pressing question. The
Political Ecology of Education examines the opportunities for and
constraints on advancing food sovereignty in the 17 de Abril
settlement, a community born out of a massacre of landless
Brazilian workers in 1996. Based on immersive fieldwork over the
course of seven years, David Meek makes the provocative argument
that critical forms of food systems education are integral to
agrarian social movements' survival. While the need for critical
approaches is especially immediate in the Amazon, Meek's study
speaks to the burgeoning attention to food systems education at
various educational levels worldwide, from primary to postgraduate
programs. His book calls us to rethink the politics of the possible
within these pedagogies.
Roads through Mwinilunga provides a historical appraisal of social
change in Northwest Zambia from 1750 until the present. By looking
at agricultural production, mobility, consumption, and settlement
patterns, existing explanations of social change are reassessed.
Using a wide range of archival and oral history sources, Iva Pesa
shows the relevance of Mwinilunga to broader processes of
colonialism, capitalism, and globalisation. Through a focus on
daily life, this book complicates transitions from subsistence to
market production and dichotomies between tradition and modernity.
Roads through Mwinilunga is a crucial addition to debates on
historical and social change in Central Africa.
The Khoisan of the Cape are widely considered virtually extinct as
a distinct collective following their decimation, dispossession and
assimilation into the mixed-race group 'coloured' during
colonialism and apartheid. However, since the democratic transition
of 1994, increasing numbers of 'Khoisan revivalists' are rejecting
their coloured identity and engaging in activism as indigenous
people. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Cape Town,
this book takes an unprecedented bottom-up approach. Centring emic
perspectives, it scrutinizes Khoisan revivalism's origins and
explores the diverse ways Khoisan revivalists engage with the past
to articulate a sense of indigeneity and stake political claims.
In contemporary culture, there is no stronger imperative than to be
authentic. But what does authenticity actually mean? Everywhere we
turn, we are urged to "live our truth": an element of Western
culture that is almost never questioned. Authenticity in all its
contexts is becoming more significant than ever as digital culture
breeds fakery and capitalism offers the illusion of infinite
choice. In this climate, finding and being yourself is a more
complex idea than it sounds - one that should not necessarily be
taken as doctrine. In this set of six sharp, lively essays, the
writer and journalist Emily Bootle explores how authenticity has
pervaded every facet of our culture, from modern celebrity and
identity politics to Instagram captions and wellness. Blending pop
culture and philosophy, this book dismantles the ideology
surrounding being ourselves at all costs, and questions what fuels
our authenticity obsession.
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