Summary
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.
Geoff Andrews is a writer and academic. His recent writing has been on modern Italy and he is the author of Not a Normal Country: Italy after Berlusconi (Pluto Press, 2005). He has also written on British politics and the history of social and political movements and his previous books include Endgames and New Times: The Final Years of British Communism (2004). In addition to his academic work, he also writes for a range of newspapers and journals, including the Financial Times, Open Democracy, and Soundings, of which he is an associate editor. He is currently Staff Tutor in Politics at the Open University. For further news of his recent writing go to www.geoffandrews.net
