Organizing Eating: Communicating for Equity Across U.S. Food Systems

This book develops ＂organizing eating＂ as an organizational-communication centered framework for understanding how communication and power combine to actively shape eating and working in the U.S. food system.

Drawing together established scholars, the book sheds light on how the interconnected aspects of power are communicative in nature, shaping and constraining the possibilities for organizing across the food system. The chapters provide grounded insight into the role of racism, corporate and state power, food cooperatives, urban farm systems, food policy, and labor practices, drawing attention to the pathways needed to pursue more equitable food systems. Providing readers with a set of useful critical conceptual tools and an understanding of communication frameworks, chapters identify common principles for critical organizing within the food movement and addresses the relevance of the COVID-19 pandemic and the national uprising against anti-Black violence for understanding the urgent possibilities of food justice.

This cohesive collection of cutting-edge scholarship will be of interest to organizational communication scholars, critical/cultural communication scholars, environmental communication scholars, and health communication scholars; and the interdisciplinary fields of environmental studies, agriculture and food studies, and organization and labor studies.

Sarah E. Dempsey is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her research and teaching engages with feminist theory, critical, cultural studies, and organization studies to explore questions of corporate power, labor, and collective organizing. She has published research in outlets like Food, Culture & Society, Management Communication Quarterly, Children’s Geographies, Organization, and in the edited collection, Food & Place: A Critical Introduction.