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Just Transformations in Food Systems: Through Agroecology, Food Sovereignty and the Right to Food
Open Access Book Series with

Edited by Colin Anderson and Ernesto Mendez

Initiated in January 2025 with launch of a slate of first books in the series anticipated to be published in 2026. Contact colin.anderson@uvm.edu for information.

Addressing the intersecting societal and planetary crises requires not only tweaking our thinking and action, but confronting the very cultural, political, economic and intellectual systems that underpin these problems. This series will thus engage with the notion of Just Transformations in Food Systems, recognizing that while it is increasingly recognized that transformation is inevitable, but justice is not. Without addressing issues of power, equity, sovereignty, governance, holism and emancipation, efforts towards a better system will fall short. Titles in this series will put forward provocative ideas, outcomes of transdisciplinary research and new visions for shifting from extractive end exploitative economies and cultures to ones that are regenerative and just. 

Just Transformations in Food Systems will confront the changes that are needed to create a more just and sustainable food system in different world regions and at a planetary scale. Books will engage with the complementary ideas of agroecology, food sovereignty and the right to food, along with sister concepts and movements that can help inform the quest for new analysis, approaches, practices, and politics. Authors will focus on critically assessing the many problems that underpin the injustices and environmental violence at the root of food systems to better understand how these systems can be dismantled. There will be a simultaneous emphasis on learning from the people, organizations and movements that are enacting just transformations by reimagining and building alternatives in different parts of the world.

The scholarly monographs and edited collections in this series will be distinguished by their critical and bold engagement with the themes of power, privilege, labor, rights, transformation, emancipation, decolonization, deepening democracy and other critical ideas linked to just transformations. The series will provide an invaluable resource for students, researchers, activist-scholars, scholarly-activists, policy-makers, community organizers, and educators. The offerings in this series will be written in accessible style and, as a whole, the series will provide a reservoir of thinking, new ideas and bold calls to action that can guide our search for a more just, sustainable and sane future for food systems and for the planet.

Just Transitions in Food Systems is unique in its specific focus on social and political transformation and social justice in the context of climate crisis, ecological collapse, and deep inequities in the world. The series is embedded in global an action-oriented network and ongoing efforts to mobilize to transform food systems. It will draw from an international authorship made up of leading and up-and-coming authors from Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia and North America. Each book proposal will need to outline how they plan to feature the work of young scholars, women, BIPOC scholars and scholars from the global south.

All books in this series will be Open Access, supported through sponsorship by different foundations, grants, author contributions and other sources raised by the series editors and the authors/editors of each book.  Books will take a transdisciplinary approach bringing together social sciences, natural sciences, humanities and people’s knowledge. The series will include a combination of edited books, textbooks, research monographs and short form monographs. The titles will be aimed at anyone with an interest in deepening their understanding of food system transformation through an exploration of empirical research, new concepts, case studies, conceptual frameworks, critical analysis and bold blue sky thinking.