A lively survey of the politics of the Slow Food movement, an antidote to our fast-moving, work-obsessed capitalist culture.

Autorentext

Geoff Andrews is Lecturer and Staff Tutor in Politics at the Open University and a co-editor of Soundings. He has written widely on the history of the left and on contemporary Italian politics. His publications include Citizenship (1991) and - with Nina Fishman and Kevin Morgan - Opening the Books: Essays on the Cultural and Social History of the Communist Party (1995). He is currently completing a new book Not a Normal Country: Italy under Berlusconi.

Klappentext

The Slow Food movement was set up in Italy as a response to the dominance of fast food chains, supermarkets and large-scale agribusiness. It seeks to defend what it calls 'the universal right to pleasure' and promotes an alternative approach to food production and consumption based on the promotion of 'good, clean and fair' local products. This is the first in-depth study of the fascinating politics of Slow Food, which in twenty years has grown into an international organisation with more than 80,000 members in over 100 countries. With its roots in the 1960s and 1970s counter-culture, Slow Food's distinctive politics lie in the unity between gastronomic pleasure and environmental responsibility. The movement crosses the left-right divide to embrace both the conservative desire to preserve traditional rural communities and an alternative 'virtuous' idea of globalisation. Geoff Andrews shows that the alternative future embodied in Slow Food extends to all aspects of modern life. The Slow Food Story presents an extensive new critique of fast-moving, work-obsessed contemporary capitalist culture.

Inhalt
PrefacePART ONE: IDEAS.1: Politics in Search of Pleasure2: The Critique of 'Fast Life'3: Terra MadrePART TWO: PEOPLE4: Gastronome! The Arrival of a New Political Subject5: The Return of the ProducerA...and the Death of the Consumer?6: The MovementPART THREE: PLACES7: Rediscovering the Local8: Virtuous Globalisation.9: Slow Food, Gastronomy and Cultural PoliticsReferencesIndex