Food, Culture, Power, Environment - Bibliography
Compiled by Elizabeth Heilman
Against the Grain: Biotechnology and the Corporate Takeover of Your Food
Marc Lappé and Britt Bailey. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1998.
This book focuses especially on Monsanto to evaluate the corporate claims for the benefits of genetically engineered food.
Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh
Helena Norberg-Hodge. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1991.
Tells the story of Ladakh in northern India to highlight the way in which development is destroying ecologically viable indigenous cultures. See also the video Ancient Futures, an important classroom resource.
Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge
Vandana Shiva. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1997.
A passionate but scholarly denunciation of the West's plunder of Third World biodiversity.
The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers and Defenders of the Amazon
Susanna Hecht and Alexander Cockburn. New York: Harper Perennial, 1994.
An important overview of the social and ecological dynamics of rainforest destruction and resistance. Helpful appendices -- interviews, manifestos, truths and myths, etc. -- that could be excerpted for students.
A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations
Clive Ponting. New York: Penguin, 1991.
A history book that pays especially close attention to the effects of colonialism and neo-colonialism on the earth and the indigenous people who depend on it.
In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations
Jerry Mander. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1991.
Mander is director of the International Forum on Globalization. In this book, he offers a powerful critique of cultures based on modern technologies, and argues that these technologies are not politically neutral. Mander explores the negative consequences when these imperialistic cultures collide with indigenous cultures.
The No-Nonsense Guide to Climate Change
Dinyar Godrej, ed. Toronto: New Internationalist, 2001.
A short, readable summary of the causes and consequences of global warming, focusing on human health, farming, and wildlife.
Power Politics
Arundhati Roy. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2001.
Arundhati Roy writes passionately about a range of issues in this book of essays, but especially about the politics of dams in India -- which Roy sees as metaphor for the consequences of "development" worldwide.
Redesigning Life? The Worldwide Challenge to Genetic Engineering
Brian Tokar, ed. New York: Zed, 2001.
Perhaps the best critical overview to the genetic engineering debates, featuring the most prominent scholar- activists.
Resource Rebels: Native Challenges to Mining and Oil Corporations
Al Gedicks. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2001.
Gedicks chronicles transnational indigenous movements that oppose mining and oil company exploitation. These are some of the most important struggles on the planet.
Savages
Joe Kane. New York: Vintage Books, 1996.
A fast-paced account of the invasion of the Oriente rainforest in eastern Ecuador by U.S.-based oil companies and the resistance of Huaorani Indians. Much of it is suitable for high school use.
Save My Rainforest
Monica Zak. Wonderful illustrations by Bengt-Arne Runnerström. (Available also in Spanish and Swedish). 1992.
True story of a young boy who leads a mass march to save the rainforest of his country.
Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply
Vandana Shiva. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1999.
Details the impact of the increasing corporate control over the world's food supply. An important and devastating critique.
World Hunger: Twelve Myths
Francis Moore Lappé, Joseph Collins and Peter Rosset. New York: Food First/Grove, 1998.
This book marches through the most widely held myths about why people are hungry around the world, and punctures them one by one. The authors argue that overpopulation, lack of technology, or failure to apply modern farming techniques, are not to blame for hunger. The issue is how land is owned and controlled -- too much marketplace, not enough democracy.
The World is Not for Sale: Farmers Against Junk Food
José Bové and François Dufour. New York: Verso, 2001.
Interviews with French farmer José Bové, a prominent activist against corporate-driven globalization of food, and François Dufour, General Secretary of the French Farmers' Confederation.
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