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Dedication -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Author Biographies -- Introduction -- Learning -- Food -- Sustainability -- Putting It All Together: Learning, Food, and Sustainability -- References -- Part I: Learning, Food, and Sustainability in the Home and Community -- Chapter 1: Learning and Food at the Mother's Breast -- Introduction -- Breastfeeding Practices During the Last Century -- Infant Feeding and Breast Milk Production -- Breastfeeding: A Public Issue -- Policy Initiatives That Support Breastfeeding -- Public Backlash Against Breastfeeding -- Conclusion

"Sustainability and the Civil Commons" moves beyond rural roots to build a comprehensive understanding of sustainability that combines global reach with local focus.

Food is a source of sustenance, a cause for celebration, an inducement to temptation, a vehicle for power, an indicator of well-being, a catalyst for change and, above all, a life good. Along with other life goods such as potable water, clean air, adequate shelter and protective clothing, food is something we cannot live without. The global corporate food system, however, allows 800 million to go hungry, while an even larger number of people grow obese. Based in money-values, this food system promotes accumulation first and foremost, enriching a few while creating economic, social and environmental externalities that are destroying local economies, devastating individuals, families and communities and degrading the planet. What would a food system look like that was based in life-values, centred on the commons and anchored by social justice? This paper will focus on the creation of sustainable food systems, beginning with the crises of the global corporate food system and then moving to the heart of sustainable food systems – the civil commons.

While interdisciplinary researchers cultivate a critical attitude toward disciplinary constraints, they do not necessarily extend that attitude to their research design, interpretation of findings, role as researchers, or society at large. Allying interdisciplinary research with critical theory opens up the critique that interdisciplinarity begins, allowing research to move beyond the bounds not only of disciplines, but also of the status quo. By looking at interdisciplinarity through the idea of relationships and then infusing those relationships with a critical attitude, researchers can build interdisciplinary relations of suspicion. These relations of suspicion can help researchers begin to address complex contemporary issues such as globalization and sustainability. Social science is a social phenomenon embedded in a political and ethical context. What is explored, and how it is explored, can hardly avoid either supporting (reproducing) or challenging existing social conditions. Different social interests are favoured or disfavoured depending on the questions that are asked (and not asked), and on how reality is represented and interpreted. Thus the interpretations and the theoretical assumptions on which these are based are not neutral but are part of, and help to construct, political and ideological conditions. (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2000, p. 8)

While the origins of the social economy date long before the period of industrialization or the modern state (Shragge & Fontan, 2000), it is growing in importance as we find ourselves in 'the cancer stage of capitalism' (McMurtry, 2013). Facing issues such as exponentially growing inequality, the demise of rural communities, an exploding obesity epidemic and jobless recoveries from repeated financial crises, more and more people are turning to the social economy for solutions to their problems (see McMurtry 2010; Mook et al. 2010). This paper reports on a pilot study that focused on the Local Organic Food Co-ops Network, created by people who oppose the industrial food system and want to specialize in local, organic food. Adopting a political-economy lens to understand this opposition through the words of participants, the study employed semi-structured interviews to explore the learning dimensions of this social economy organization. The study found that respondents participated in social learning and learned alterity in the social economy. The paper concludes that social economy organizations need to prioritize social over economic values, and the potential for change associated with social learning is key to making this choice. (DIPF/Orig.)

Although social movements can lose their way in neoliberal times, building alliances can help them to leverage their strengths and overcome their weaknesses, thus avoiding co-optation and "mission drift." One example of this strategy can be found within the co-operative movement: the Local Organic Food Co-ops Network in Ontario. A pilot study of six co-operatives in this organization reveals that they cultivate alliances in four ways: among member co-ops, through the creation of the network, with other types of organizations, and with other social movements. These alliances strengthen the co-operative movement, help to make the politics of alternative food systems work, influence the economy toward co-operation, and open up possibilities for establishing and maintaining a more sustainable food system. RÉSUMÉ Les mouvements sociaux, bien qu'ils puissent s'égarer à l'ère du néolibéralisme, peuvent établir des alliances afin de profiter de leurs atouts et surmonter leurs faiblesses, évitant ainsi la cooptation ou les déviations. On retrouve un exemple de cette stratégie d'alliance dans le cadre du mouvement coopératif en Ontario : The Local Organic Food Co-ops Network. Une étude pilote de six coopératives faisant partie de cette organisation révèle que celles-ci créent des alliances de quatre manières différentes : entre coopératives membres, grâce à la création du réseau même, avec d'autres types d'organisation et avec d'autres mouvements sociaux. Ces alliances renforcent le mouvement coopératif, aident à faire fonctionner les systèmes d'alimentation alternative, encouragent la collaboration économique et contribuent à établir et maintenir un système d'alimentation plus durable.

The negative impacts of industrial agriculture on rural areas have been well documented. The loss of family farms, the exhaustion of soil, the pollution of groundwater and rivers, and the collapse of rural communities all attest to the effects of a global economy that values short-term profits over long-term environmental, social, and economic sustainability (Sumner 2005). Organic agriculture evolved as a direct challenge to these negative trends, based on a philosophy that promotes a more holistic system that cares for soil, plants, animals, people, and communities. While this philosophy has been co-opted by large corporate actors only interested in the price premium associated with organic products, it nevertheless has inspired many people to take up, or convert to, organic farming. Given such progressive philosophical underpinnings, how do women fare in organic agriculture? Are gender relations different than those in conventional agriculture? How do these relations, in turn, affect rural farming communities? After a brief overview of industrial agriculture and organic agriculture, this paper will explore gender issues with respect to organic agriculture by presenting an overview of existing studies in the field, plus observations based on recent primary research with organic farmers. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractIn this article, we conjoin two long‐standing lines of inquiry in criminology—the study of prison life and the study of sexual assault—by using original qualitative and quantitative data from 315 transgender women incarcerated in 27 California men's prisons. In so doing, we advance an analysis of the factors and processes that shape their experience of sexual victimization in prison. The results of qualitative analysis of 198 reported incidents of sexual victimization exhibit a range of types of sexual victimization experienced by transgender women in prison and reveal the centrality of relationships to their experiences of victimization. Findings from logistic regression models buttress the qualitative results, highlighting a factor that consistently and powerfully indicates vulnerability to sexual victimization is involvement in consensual sexual relationships with male prisoners. Together, the data demonstrate the prominence of intimate partner violence in prison, complicate the distinction between consent and unwanted sexual experiences in the lives of transgender women in prisons for men, and shine a light on the workings of gender in a total institution that privileges heteronormativity at the expense of the safety of transgender women in prisons for men. We discuss the implications of our findings in light of timely policy concerns.