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Agric Hum Values (2010) 27:525526 DOI 10.1007/s10460-010-9290-x
Jennifer Clapp and Doris Fuchs (eds): Corporate power in global agrifood governance
MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2009, 308 pp, ISBN 978-0-262-51237-4
John M. OSullivan
Accepted: 15 September 2010 / Published online: 20 October 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
This is an important book for those who need to see the pieces of the global food system and the critical role of the agrifood transnational corporations (TNCs) in global food trade. It helps ll in details of where we are and how we got here, and to connect the dots in terms of the trends of global food trade. This is very important even down to conversations about local control of food. It is essential to understand the very complex roles of agrifood TNCs in making and implementing food policy that impacts the entire global food system.
Editors Jennifer Clapp and Doris Fuchs lay out their goals clearly and concisely. First, they want to bring attention to two separate spheres of scholarship on the functioning of the modern global economy: those studying TNCs as dominant businesses involved in the global market economy either in terms of supply or demand and those studying the agrifood system who regularly encounter TNCs or world market regulations, even if their focus is developments in local food economies. In addition, the authors bring political science insights to the discussion as they investigate how large corporations use political power to achieve their ends. They analyze power in terms of three conceptsinstrumental, structuralist and discursive. While it is very useful to recognize the ways in which power is wielded, I did not nd the model...