Food Politics: From the Margins to the Mainstream
University of Tasmania, Thursday 30 June – Friday 1 July 2016

Critiques of global, industrialised food systems have proliferated in recent years, while food practices previously considered ‘alternative’ or ‘marginal’ now increasingly enjoy mainstream visibility. In the global North, concerns once limited to social and political movements motivated by animal rights, anti-corporate, health and environmental agendas appear on primetime television cooking shows, in the pages of best-selling non-fiction exposés, in produce-driven and provenance-focused restaurant menus, in the growing farmers’ markets and community-supported agriculture movements, and in the labelling and advertising strategies of major food manufacturers. Elsewhere in the world, grassroots movements for food security, food sovereignty, seed and wage rights are gaining prominence in local, national and global contexts.

What are the implications of this ‘mainstreaming’ of food politics? Does it make ethical, sustainable food accessible to more people? Does it signal changes to global food systems? Or does it simply offer new opportunities for marketing ‘spin’ and corporate greenwashing? What does the mainstreaming of food politics mean for grassroots alternative food movements? Where does food politics go from here?

Abstracts are invited that explore the key questions raised by this transformation of food politics from the margins to the mainstream. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• The role of alternative food networks: their practices, politics, successes, challenges;
• Media representations of food and food politics;
• The rise of new production, retail and consumption networks and practices;
• Impacts on food and agricultural production;
• Mainstream ‘appropriations’ of political discourses and projects.

Keynote speakers
Prof Michael Goodman (University of Reading, UK)
A/Prof Tania Lewis (RMIT University, Australia)
* Prof Goodman and A/Prof Lewis will also host masterclasses on Wedne
day 29 June 2016, details to follow.

Submission of abstracts
Please email your abstract (300-500 words) by Friday 25 March 2016. Include your full name, contact details, academic affiliation and a short biography. For more information, please visit the conference website or contact Erin Hawley or Michelle Phillipov. Selected papers will be invited to contribute to an edited collection.