Small farms represent important components of food systems and rural areas, as sources of occupation and livelihood, factors of socio-economic diversity, cradles of grass-roots innovation and experimentation. Their capacity to adapt and to contribute positively to societal challenges depends on the
strategies they can develop and their ability to innovate. The book provides an in-depth exploration of the determinants, dynamics and outcomes of rural and agricultural change processes, with a special focus on the role of small and family farming. Covering both the system and the farm level of
analysis, the authors offer a comprehensive view of approaches and models capable to grasp different complementary aspects of the development trajectories followed by farms, food systems and territories facing multi-dimensional drivers of change and exposed to a range of vulnerability factors. The
emerging characters and roles of innovation networks and social learning, as well as the decision-making processes at the farm level are explored in particular depth, with attention to the multi-dimensional societal expectations vis-à-vis agriculture, small farms and rural areas, with
specific attention to food and nutrition security concerns.
What role do man-eating monsters - vampires, zombies, werewolves and cannibals - play in contemporary culture? This book explores the question of whether recent representations of humans as food in popular culture characterizes a unique moment in Western cultural history and suggests a new set of
attitudes toward people, monsters, animals, and death.
This volume analyzes how previous epochs represented man-eating monsters and cannibalism. Cultural taboos across the world are explored and brought into perspective whilst we contemplate how the representations of humans as commodities can create a global atmosphere that creeps towards cannibalism
as a norm.
This book also explores the links between the role played by the animal rights movement in problematizing the difference between humans and nonhuman animals. Instead of looking at the relations between food, body, and culture, or the ways in which media images of food reach out to various
constituencies and audiences, as some existing studies do, this collection is focused on the crucial question, of how and why popular culture representations diffuse the borders between monsters, people, and animals, and how this affects our ideas about what may and may not be eaten.