The Slow Food Story : Politics and Pleasure Politics and Pleasure

Politics and International Studies Contents 4 Preface 5 Acknowledgements 9 Part One Ideas 13 1Politics in Search of Pleasure 15 2The Critique of ‘Fast Life’ 41 3Terra Madre 60 Part Two People 77 4Gastronome! The Arrival of a New Political Subject 79 5The Return of the Producer ... and the Death of the Consumer? 98 6The Movement 115 Part Three Places 139 7Rediscovering the Local 141 8Virtuous Globalisation 160 9Slow Food, Gastronomy and Cultural Politics 177 List of Osterias and Restaurants 195 Notes 196 Index 203 Environmental,Studies/Ecology,Social,Issues,Welfare,and,Policy Annotation 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 A lively survey of the politics of the Slow Food movement, an antidote to our fast-moving, work-obsessed capitalist culture.