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The theoretical purview and contemporary political relevance of agro‐food studies are restricted by their unexamined methodological foundations in modernist ontology. The nature‐society dualism at the core of this ontology places agro‐food studies, and their 'parent' disciplines in the orthodox social sciences, outside the broad intellectual project that is advancing the greening of social theory, and militates against effective engagement with the bio‐politics of environmental organizations and Green movements. The disabling consequences of the erasure of nature in agro‐food studies are explored by analyzing several recent theoretical perspectives: the consumption 'turn' in the work of Fine, Marsden and their respective colleagues, and Wageningen actor‐oriented rural sociology. The merits of actor‐network theory in resolving these ontological limitations are then considered using brief case‐studies of food scares, agri‐biotechnologies, and the recent proposals to regulate organic agriculture in the United States.

A brief survey of the international political economy literature reveals divergent conceptualizations of globalization & conflicting views of the state. For greater clarity, an ideal-typical taxonomy of world-scale processes & corporate organizational forms is proposed. It is suggested that contemporary global restructuring represents the combined, yet uneven, interaction of concurrent world-scale processes. This framework is used to discuss the limitations of some recent analyses of the globalization of agrofood systems & offer suggestions for future research. 1 Table, 64 References. Adapted from the source document

ABSTRACTThe use of search and heuristic methods as a means of solving nonlinear aggregate planning models has been given considerable attention in recent years. A few of these methods have shown promising results. In this paper a sectioning search procedure is explored as an alternative means of solving nonlinear aggregate planning models. Application is made to two test cases, and the results are compared with those of other solution methods.

China is a far larger and more diverse country than many people in the West realise. The provinces that make up the country are considerable social, economic and political systems in their own right. They are comparable in size and complexity to European states.China's Provinces in Reform is concerned with the impact of economic reform and social and politial change within the provinces at the immediate sub-central level of the People's Republic of China. One of the main aims of this book is to question over-generalizations about China's development in the reform era. However, the provincial a