My Account Log in

1 option

What is agriculture for? : archetypes for future food systems / Paul B. Thompson.

Oxford Scholarship Online: Philosophy Available online

View online
Format:
Book
Author/Creator:
Thompson, Paul B., 1951- author.
Series:
Oxford scholarship online.
Oxford scholarship online
Language:
English
Subjects (All):
Agricultural innovations.
Comparative agriculture.
Agriculture and state.
Physical Description:
1 online resource (302 pages)
Edition:
1st ed.
Place of Publication:
New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2025]
Summary:
'What Is Agriculture For?' describes four contrasting rationales for technical and policy change in agriculture and food systems. Technological Modernization applies an ethic common to every sector in the industrial economy: production should seek greater efficiencies in order to lower consumer costs and secure adequate supply but should not do so in ways that harm third parties or the environment. Sustainable Intensification emphasizes future challenges to the global food supply, and Rural Resilience places special value on the social role of farmers and other producers. Urban Agriculture highlights cities' growing vulnerability to rurally based supply chains. Each perspective leads to distinct policy goals and suggests different priorities for technical innovation. At the same time, the argument for any particular innovation may draw on two of more of these archetypal rationales.
Contents:
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Contents
Introduction
The Purpose of This Book
What Is Agriculture For?
Some Brief Terminological Remarks
How Philosophers Do Ethics
Ethical Theory
The Plan of the Book
1 Four Archetypes for Future Food Systems
Food Infrastructure
Food Infrastructure and the Philosophy of Technology
The Archetypes: A Preliminary Overview
Technological Modernization
Sustainable Intensification
Rural Resilience
Urban Agriculture
Infrastructure, Ethics, and Archetypes
The Future of Food
Technology, Archetypes, and Future Food Infrastructure
2 Archetypes, Imaginaries, and the Philosophy of Technology
Methods? We Don't Need No Stinking Methods!
Archetypes
Social Theory and Its Discontents
The Imaginary
The Social Imaginary
Sociotechnical Imaginaries
The Philosophy of Technology
Postphenomenology and Philosophy of Technology
Media, Infrastructure, and the Philosophy of Technology
But What Does It All Mean?
3 Technological Modernization and Industrial Agriculture
Technological Modernization: A Recap
Modernity and the Rationalization of Society: A Perfunctory Telling
Modernization as Narrative
Modernity, Industrialization, and the Rationalization of Food and Agriculture
Industrializing Food Systems in the Twentieth Century
Technological Modernization and Its Ideological Forms
A Dominant Imaginary
Seeing Like a Philosopher
4 Science and Sustainable Intensification
Agricultural Science and the Farm Crisis
Sustainable Intensification: Some Basics
Sustainable Intensification: The Birth of an Archetype
Sustainable Intensification: A Memoir
The Ethics of Sustainable Intensification
Sustainable Intensification as the Top Priority for Innovation.
Expanding the Idea, Creating an Imaginary
The Sustainability in Sustainable Intensification
Productionism and Intensification
Sustainable Intensification and Climate Ethics
Sustainable Intensification and the Philosophy of Technology
Coda: A Contested Vision of the Future
5 Rural Resilience and the Food Movement
The Food Movement
Constructing a Movement: Organic Food and Health
Constructing a Movement: Agricultural Fundamentalism
Constructing a Movement: Agriculture and Environment
Constructing a Movement: Farming and Social Justice
Rural Resilience Takes Shape, the Food Movement Gathers Steam
Smallholders in Less Industrialized Regions
But Is There Really a Food Movement?
Battling Archetypes
A Vague and Ambivalent Archetype?
6 Urban Agriculture: The Food Movement Moves On
A Unified Archetype?
Feeding Cities in the Twenty-first Century
Urban Food Policy and the Narrative of Food Security
Urban Agriculture as Food Security
Food Security Goes Vertical
Growing on the Margins toward Food Sovereignty
Urban Farms as Sites of Resistance and Emancipation
Tensions in the Urban Agriculture Imaginary
A Weak and Still Emergent Archetype?
7 Gaps, Overlaps, and the Political Ecology of Food Systems
A Few Preliminaries
Obvious Overlaps
Gap #1: Animals
Gap #2: Organic Farming
Gap #3: Identity, Race, and Social Justice
The Rurality Overlap
Sustainability Overlaps
Philosophical Overlaps as Political Opportunity
A Concluding Transition
8 Deep Agrarianism
Our Story So Far
A Look Backward
Back to the Future
Revisiting the Archetypes
Back to the Future Part II
Another Agrarianism: Wendell Berry
A Final Agrarianism, a Little Less Deep
Back to the Future Part III
Notes
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4.
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Bibliography
Index.
Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on June 6, 2025).
ISBN:
0-19-762578-9
0-19-762576-2
0-19-762577-0
OCLC:
1522720206

The Penn Libraries is committed to describing library materials using current, accurate, and responsible language. If you discover outdated or inaccurate language, please fill out this feedback form to report it and suggest alternative language.

Find

Home Release notes

My Account

Shelf Request an item Bookmarks Fines and fees Settings

Guides

Using the Find catalog Using Articles+ Using your account