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This work asks what part food has played in the formation, daily life and success (or failure) of utopian communities, andconsiders why food is significant to utopian ideas. In this connection it primarily considers three things: the ways in which food and gastronomy have figured in utopian thinking to express or attempt to realise better ways of living; the extent to which utopian ideas about food have become mainstream, and in what ways; and why some aspects of utopian thinking on the subject have been adopted and others not. The approach is interdisciplinary, and although the thesis is built on detailed textual analysis of primary sources, it also draws on the methodologies of literature, history, sociology and cultural anthropology to provide a more complete picture of the food-­‐related theories and experiences of selected utopias in Europe and North America between the mid-­‐seventeenth and twenty-­‐first centuries. Moreover, the discussion engages with the theoretical proposals of utopian thinkers as they relate to eating, dietary choices, agriculture, production and food supply, assessing the every-­‐ day experience of people executing these ideas inside utopian communities. The thesis places examples into their historical context with an eye to contemporaneous mainstream ideas concerning food and gastronomy, paying particular attention to their mutual influences, conflicts and points of differentiation. Often dismissed as fictional fantasies, utopian ideas are frequently condemned as unrealistic, impossible or the work of fanatics. While notions of utopia may lie on the borderline between the possible and the impossible, the factual and the fictional, a review of a critical everyday component—food—makes it possible to take a fresh look at this conceptual “no place”. By providing alternative perspectives on the origins of many of our current preoccupations with food-­‐related questions, new ways of thinking about both utopia and our attitudes to food emerge.

This thesis addresses the impacts of emerging energy scarcity on food security, and explores strategies for transition to a sustainable food system. The core research questions focus on the transition movement, its political strategy, and proposals for food sustainability. Contextual questions include: What post-peak oil scenarios are plausible/implausible given current evidence regarding global oil production, and available energy alternatives? Do any current trends indicate the unfolding of one scenario, in particular? And how might this scenario impact on food security, and what are the implications for transition movement strategy? Evidence is presented that global oil production has already ‘plateaued’, and the most likely scenarios for industrial societies now lie on a continuum between forced, gradual energy descent and rapid collapse. Emerging trends indicate that energy scarcity is associated with the evolution of a post-liberal order, as anticipated by some contributors to the ‘politics of scarcity’ debate in the 1970’s. These trends are also manifesting within the global food system, in the form of ‘land-grabbing’ and widespread imposition of GM-based industrial agriculture. In light of imminent forced energy descent, emerging global trends, and learning from the Cuban Special Period, it is argued that both green political theory and transition movement strategy should focus on the contested politics of transition, in conjunction with a prospective politics that steers transition towards a new societal equilibrium. A diverse, adaptive repertoire of political strategies is proposed, including: solutions-based activism; oppositional activism; insurgent citizenship; transformative engagement with local government; and ‘de-linking’ initiatives. Scaling up of local Transition initiatives should include: promotion of regional solidarity networks between urban centres; regional food system planning; and alliance-building with other counter-hegemonic social movements. It is further proposed that a ‘food sovereignty’ framing is adopted, and that scaled up, farm sector agroecology is promoted, to complement existing permaculture and organic approaches.

Food security is one of the greatest challenges the world faces today. Providing nutritious, safe and affordable food for all in a sustainable way will become even more challenging under the burden of increasing world population and global environmental change. Whist 795 million people are undernourished; one third of the food produced globally for human consumption is lost or wasted. The food waste – hunger paradox is an illustration firstly of the failing global food system, and secondly of the importance of food waste in the sustainability and food debates. Food waste represents substantial economic losses, has devastating environmental impacts, and moral and ethical implications in the face of food poverty. Due to its detrimental economic, environmental and social impacts, food waste has received increasing attention in research and policy, viewed predominately from an engineering and technological perspective. In response, this research firstly critically reviewed contemporary conceptual frameworks and reframed food waste to produce the Food Waste Hierarchy. Secondly, it critiqued the current methodological approaches and developed a new framework to investigate the scale, origin, patterns and causes of food waste generation in the hospitality and food service sector in Malaysia. Finally, the research identified the most promising food waste prevention measures for the sector. These objectives were achieved by developing and applying a mixed methods interdisciplinary approach that linked the biophysical and economic flows of food provisioning and waste generation, with the social practices associated with food preparation and consumption. The food waste prevention insights that emerged from this research call for change in both the socio-technical systems and social practices related to food production and consumption; a message relevant to the food and broader sustainability research.

Despite a sustained academic interest in food environments and their impact upon dietary practices, relatively little is known about the ways in which individuals interact with the food environment. The multiple and complex factors that influence food choices are difficult to investigate, especially in the family setting where individual and collective practices intersect. This thesis investigates how people perform food practices and unpacks how specific contexts shape, promote and constrain food behaviours. The case study through which this is examined is that of the food practices of 26 residents of Sandwell, a uniformly deprived metropolitan borough in the West Midlands. Through ethnographically collecting accounts and observations of how residents performed food practices, both in the home and while shopping for food, highly routinized behaviours were revealed. The notion of routinized decision making, as it appears in social science research, is developed and adapted to incorporate descriptions of general approaches to routine food behaviours. The novel concept of routines-of-practice is employed to characterise these routines in terms of agency, attitudes towards individualism, and reliance on environmental and contextual cues. Food shopping practices are positioned, to an extent, as acts of consumerism performed in the pervasive consumption environment of the supermarket. The home, by contrast, was depicted as a site of both privacy and responsibility. The ways in which responsibility was interpreted and enacted dictated how family meals and routine home food behaviours were structured. By looking at food practices in terms of repetitive, context specific and often uncritical behaviours, this thesis highlights the importance of place in moulding food practices. Understanding how people interact and interpret their environment has been underestimated in diet-related health policy and promotion. This thesis specifically examines the way food practices are influenced by environment and context at the micro level.

This thesis explores the conditions under which community-based consumer food co-ops can foster pro-environmental food practices. Case study methodology is employed to study five UK food co-ops and identify opportunities and challenges to developing capacities in those co-ops towards: building a shared sense of purpose around environmentally sustainable food consumption; making sustainable food choices accessible and affordable; and, encouraging member participation. Additionally, life history interviews were undertaken with 18 individuals who were already making environmentally friendly food choices to illuminate how community food co-ops can develop strategies to engage their members and promote sustainable food consumption. Building a co-op community with a shared purpose around sustainable food consumption is more likely when there is clarity of focus on the prioritisation of environmental objectives among members and the leadership team; however, high overhead costs may shift the focus to commercial survival. Co-ops can be more price-competitive in the category of fresh produce and unpackaged wholefoods than in packaged and convenience foods. Members' labour can reduce overhead costs, but getting members to participate is a considerable challenge. Democratic structure alone is not enough. Participation was motivated primarily by the need to belong to a community and a commitment to co-ops' perceived values. There was limited evidence at the studied co-ops of systematic efforts to create opportunities for social learning and relationship-building among members towards strengthening volunteering commitment and developing practice-relevant knowledge and skills. Life history accounts of sustainable food practitioners illustrated how factors such as parents and peers, work, education, books and media, living environment, and ethical concerns, worked through key mechanisms of influence, including direct experience, knowledge, social learning, facilitating contexts and personal agency, to shape sustainable food practices over time. Understanding these factors and mechanisms suggests a number of practical strategies for food co-ops to effectively engage their members with environmental objectives. As well as removing structural constraints, effective strategies will be alert to the bi-directional nature of attitude-behaviour relationships and the formative processes that underpin a range of self-transcendent values aligned with environmentally responsible food consumption.

This research explores the reformed UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) as an institution addressing a changed world, and as an illustration of evolving global food security governance. The research sets out to answer the extent to which the CFS is realising its reform objectives and how it is positioning itself within a changing architecture of global food security governance. Informed by literature on global governance and embedded neoliberalism, the inquiry centres around three case studies – Civil Society Mechanism, Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests, and the Global Strategic Framework – which serve to highlight the operationalization of key reform objectives while simultaneously providing insight into broader policy processes and dynamics. Data was collected through document analysis, participant observation, and interviews. The resulting analysis provides clear evidence of the impact of enhanced participation on policy outcomes and concludes that the policy recommendations emerging from the CFS are amongst the most comprehensive and useful in terms of applicability and uptake at the national and regional level. The analysis also reveals that despite its methods, outcomes and mandate, the CFS is being systematically undermined by other actors seeking to maintain influence and sustain neoliberal hegemony across food security policies at the global level. The research contributes to global governance theory by describing the functioning of a mechanisms that can address democratic deficits in global governance while elucidating related opportunities and challenges. The research also contributes to scholarship on global food security policy by challenging the application of previous analyses to the contemporary reality. The research addresses limitations in global governance literature by mapping the complexity of social and political relations across sites of negotiation, contestation and compromise between actors. The policy implications derived from this thesis focus on the need to further problematize food security and for policies to target structural causes of food insecurity. Building on the experiences of the CFS, this thesis concludes that transparent, participatory mechanisms need to be created which acknowledge, and seek to rectify, existing imbalances in power relations in policy-making processes.

Community food organisations are part of a growing interest in local and alternative forms of food, which have widely been understood as a response to the failings of the dominant food system. Despite significant academic interest, few studies have sought to understand these alternatives from the perspective of well-being, although they are grounded in claims for a better food system. In this thesis I address this gap. In order to do so I draw on Marx’s concept of alienation as the basis for understanding how well-being is constituted in four community food organisations in the East of England. In using a Marxist approach to well-being I seek to overcome the limitations of narrow, individualised conceptions of well-being that have predominated a resurgent discourse around well-being. Renewed interest in well-being and alternative food systems can be seen as reactions to the dominant logic of capital, which has prioritised economic growth and profit at the expense of human and planetary well-being. However, these potentially critical discourses have proved vulnerable to re-absorption by capital. I use Marx’s concept of alienation to bring together critique of capitalism with an understanding of community food organisations as alternative spaces of production, which enhance well-being. Both classical and recent Marxian approaches have tended to emphasize critique, with little attention to the subjective experience of capitalism or alternatives to it. Drawing on alienation to inform a Marxian approach to well-being I unite structural critique with subjective experience. I use ethnographic and qualitative methods to document participation in community food organisations as an alternative, de-alienated experience. The data generated points to the important role these spaces can play in supporting well-being. It underlines how they facilitate social interaction, an active relationship with nature, and provide an opportunity for participants to realise a sense of agency and engage in meaningful work.

This thesis examines the enduring problem of food insecurity in Africa, with a particular focus on Ethiopia and Kenya. It considers food insecurity both in acute terms - the occurrence of famine and chronic terms - famine vulnerability. More specifically it provides a new interpre~tion of the causes of food insecurity in East Africa, with respect to some of the causal factors and viable solutions. It does so by locating the occurrence of famine, and countries vulnerability to it, in the context of the global food system. The global food system is, as yet, an under-examined factor in contemporary famine analysis, particularly in East Africa and this thesis aims to explore it more comprehensively than hitherto. This thesis also makes a substantive contribution to understanding the concept of Food Sovereignty in an African context. Food Sovereignty deserves to be a more significant part of contemporary narratives that at present dominate the political and social dilemmas about food insecurity. However there are serious obstacles such as political relationships, land tenure and the industrial system of agriculture that hinder the development of Food Sovereignty as a viable option. Natural disasters, demographic pressures and ill conceived economic policies are an ongoing part of the story but in essence food insecurity is ultimately political. This thesis concludes that Food Sovereignty should be explored as a political . solution to a political problem.