Undergraduate Course: Geographies of Food (GEGR10115)
Course Outline
| School | School of Geosciences |
College | College of Science and Engineering |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | The study of food in all its dimensions offers insights into a wide range of pressing questions in human geography. Food occupies everyone to some extent, connecting people to plantation economies and histories, national and transnational resources, regulations and markets, commodity cultures and alternative economies, and collective understandings of risk, scarcity and abundance. The course provides students with a political, economic, and social understanding of food production, marketing/distribution and consumption, power-laden processes revealed as connected in time and space. Students will gain a holistic understanding of food systems in the global North and South, including current trends that restructure the North/South divide, complementing other courses with an international development focus. Students will become proficient in the use of qualitative methods to understand, compare and evaluate food-related projects enacted at different scales. |
| Course description |
1. Introductory lecture: why Geographies of Food?
PART I (WEEKS 2 AND 3): THE ORIGINS OF GLOBALIZED FOOD
2. Plantation economies and historical continuities
3. Food regimes: a divided nation, a divided world (¿pub¿ quiz: formative assignment 1)
PART II (WEEKS 4 - 7): CONTINUITIES AND CHANGES IN GLOBAL AND NATIONAL FOOD ECONOMIES
4. Brazil: reinventing old practices and realizing agro-neoliberalism (Antonio Ioris)
5. Land grabs: past and present (Janet Fisher)
6. Feeding the world: the Green Revolution and the Gene Revolution (part I of Degree Essay
Assignment due: peer-assessed outlines)
7. Urbanisation and changing agri-food systems
PART III: FOOD (IN)SECURITIES AND ALTERNATIVES (WEEKS 8, 9 AND 10)
8. Hunger and Obesity (part II of Degree Essay Assignment due midday Thursday: essays)
9. Food security versus food sovereignty
10. Alternative food networks in the global North and South
11. Group presentations (formative assignment 2)
12. Individual tutorials (voluntary and by appointment with Sara)
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Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Academic year 2017/18, Available to all students (SV1)
|
Quota: 45 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 22,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
174 )
|
| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
60 %,
Coursework
40 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Written Exam: 60%, Course Work: 40 %, Practical Exam: 0%.
60% exam; 40% essay (2,000-word).
In addition to the above components of assessment, students must complete two formative assignments:
1. ¿Pub¿ quiz about food regimes
2. Group research/fieldwork and poster presentation using ¿follow-the-thing¿ approaches |
| Feedback |
Not entered |
| Exam Information |
| Exam Diet |
Paper Name |
Hours & Minutes |
|
| Main Exam Diet S1 (December) | | 2:00 | |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- be able to outline a chronological survey of food regimes and relate then to present political economic relations witihn and between the global North and South
- be able to explain the political economic and social workings of the dominant food systems at various scales and demonstrate a knowledge of alternative trends
- be able to interpret, use and evaluate a wide range of data about food systems in the past and present
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Reading List
1. Bell, D. and Valentine, G. 1997. Consuming geographies: we are where we eat. London and New York: Routledge.
2. Counihan, Carole and Penny van Esterik. 2007. Food and culture: a reader (second edition). London and New York: Routledge.
3. Friedberg, Susan. 2004. French beans and food scares. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
4. Friedmann, Harriet. From colonialism to green capitalism: social movements and the emergence of food regimes. In Fredrick H. Buttel and Philip McMichael (eds) New directions in the sociology of global development (research in rural sociology and development, vol. 11), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp.227-264.
5. Fuller, Duncan, Andrew E. G. Jonas and Roger Lee. 2010. Interrogating alterity: alternative economic and political spaces. Surrey: Ashgate, chs. 6 and 10.
6. Millstone, Eric and Timothy Lang. 2009. The atlas of food: Who eats what, where and why. Berkeley: University of California Press.
7. Sen, Amartya. Food and Freedom. Available at: http://library.cgiar.org/bitstream/handle/10947/556/craw3.pdf?sequence.pdf
8. Wilson, Marisa. 2014. Everyday moral economies: food, politics and scale in Cuba. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell (chapter 6).
Additional readings in the course handbook. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Upon completing the course, students will be able to:
1. critically evaluate evidence and develop reasoned arguments orally, visually and in writing
2. work in a group to plan and conduct qualitative fieldwork, presenting outcomes in a clear and engaging manner
3. prepare maps and other visual material to demonstrate specific problems, concepts or trends
4. produce written work to a high standard, leaving enough time for thorough revision(s)
5. actively engage in learning by locating and reading appropriate source material, utilising resources and support offered by the university and scheduling appointments with the course organiser during office hours or when necessary
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| Special Arrangements |
None |
| Keywords | Food networks,commodity cultures,food regimes,alternative (or moral) economies,scale,qualitativ |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Marisa Wilson
Tel: (131 6)51 4634
Email: marisa.wilson@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Kirsty Allan
Tel: (0131 6)50 9847
Email: Kirsty.Allan@ed.ac.uk |
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