A Mass Conspiracy to Feed People: Food Not Bombs and the World-Class Waste of Global Cities

David Boarder Giles

Published by Duke University Press 2021

A Mass Conspiracy to Feed People

Food Not Bombs and the World-Class Waste of Global Cities

David Boarder Giles

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478021711

Overview
Contents

About this book

David Boarder Giles traces the work of Food Not Bombs—a global movement of grassroots soup kitchens that recover wasted grocery surpluses and redistribute them to those in need—to examine the relationship between waste and scarcity in global cities under late capitalism and the fight for food justice.

Author / Editor information

David Boarder Giles is Lecturer in Anthropology in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University.

Reviews

“Chronicling the work of the urban justice organization Food Not Bombs, David Boarder Giles analyzes urgent and overlapping social, economic, and political concerns common in today's global cities. Giles engages with a range of scholarly disciplines and theoretical arguments eloquently and elegantly, while offering ethnographic details that are both vivid and convincing.”

-- Robin Nagle, author of Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City

“In A Mass Conspiracy To Feed People, David Boarder Giles documents the rhizomatic magic by which the anarchist direct action group Food Not Bombs converts urban food waste into meals for the hungry and hope for a better world. Along the way he intertwines his own lived experience and a sophisticated critique of the contemporary capitalist city to create a beautiful book that is itself a recipe for a slow-simmering revolution.”

-- Jeff Ferrell, author of Drift: Illicit Mobility and Uncertain Knowledge

“[A Mass Conspiracy to Feed People] is appropriate for upper division undergraduate and graduate classes on social movements. . . . It is a must read for social activists looking to address equity issues in a neo-liberal, capitalist world. Kudos to Giles for providing such an excellent blueprint for ways in which the detritus of capitalism can be used to address the ills of the system."

-- Michael L. Hirsch International Social Science Review

“Themes of abject waste, abject communities, and the subversive potential of counterpublics form the structure of [A Mass Conspiracy to Feed People] and aptly carry the reader from the quotidian bin into new political possibilities.”

-- Benjamin Wyatt Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology

"A Mass Conspiracy is an academic book with the aesthetics of an anarchist zine, replete with side-bar soup recipes, reproductions of FNB flyers, and vivid photographs of discarded food and abandoned people. This, combined with Giles’ lively prose, helps the reader through a dense theoretical argument. It also brings us back to what really matters: who and what is being thrown out of the towering heights of global cities, and what insights and possibilities we can recover from the wreckage."

-- Alex V. Barnard Mobilization

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Preface / Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Prologue: Any given sunday in seattle Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Introduction: Of waste, cities, and conspiracies Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART I: ABJECT CAPITAL Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
PART II : WORLD-CLASS CITIES, WORLD-CLASS WASTE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	89
PART III : SLOW INSURRECTION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
Encore: A new zeitgeist Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233
Conclusion: An open letter to lost homes (political implications) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	235
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	255
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	271
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	293

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 320

eBook

Published: July 21, 2021
ISBN: 9781478021711