Farming Inside Invisible Worlds: Modernist Agriculture and its Consequences(Contemporary Food Studies: Economy, Culture and Politics)

This open access book argues that the farm is a key player in the creation and stabilisation of political, economic and ecological power-particularly in colonised landscapes like New Zealand, America and Australia. Farming Inside Invisible Worlds reviews and rejects the way that farms are characterised in orthodox economics and agricultural science and then shows how re-centring the farm using the theoretical idea of political ontology can transform the way we understand the power of farming. Starting with the colonial history of farms in New Zealand, Hugh Campbell goes on to describe the rise of modernist farming and its often hidden political, racial and ecological effects. He concludes with an examination of alternative ways to farm in New Zealand, showing how the prior histories of colonisation and modernisation reveal important ways to farm differently in post-colonial worlds. Hugh Campbell's book has wide-ranging implications for understanding the role farms play in both our food systems and landscapes, and is an exciting new addition to food studies. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open Access was funded by the University of Otago, New Zealand.

Table of Contents:
Prologue: Visible and Invisible Farming Worlds 1. Farming and Ontology 2. The Powers and Consequences of the Colonial Farm in New Zealand 3. From Colonial to Modernist Farming 4. The Crisis of Modernist Farming 5. Farming Inside Visible Worlds Epilogue: Theorizing the Ontology of Farms Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Hugh Campbell holds a Professorial Chair of Sociology at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the sociology of food. Prior to the University of Otago he was Director at the Centre for the Study of Agriculture, Food and Environment at the University of Otago, New Zealand.

Review :
There is much to love about Farming Inside Invisible Worlds. A key strength is its attentiveness to geographical and historical specificity in narrating the solidification and crises of modern agriculture ... Campbell adeptly draws on comparative material from the United States and elsewhere, making the book of interest to those studying agrarian transitions and environmental histories elsewhere in the world ... Yet it is the personal touches, such as his thick description of a fishing camp, both heavily denuded of modernist farming possibility and yet full of vitality, that render the book a true tour de grace. Campbell is an academic at the top of his game. He covers the history of agriculture in his country with breadth, clarity, and succinctness, as well as a dose of dry humour ... An important contribution from Aotearoa/New Zealand to a growing literature on settler colonial food systems across states of the former British Empire by Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars. ‘Drawing upon his farming experiences, and applying extensive knowledge from the social sciences, Hugh Campbell delivers an original and provocative account of agricultural development in Aotearoa New Zealand. It will appeal to a wide public audience, especially readers in nations such as Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada – where indigenous peoples were forcibly removed from their lands. Thoroughly researched and eloquently written, the book is set to become a classic in agrarian studies.’ The combination of long-term, widely cast academic experience and situated, personal involvement makes this a truly special book, in which different modes of knowing go together in insightful and compelling ways. An extremely stimulating book that will go down in the history of agri-food studies. Its success lies in Hugh Campbell’s analyses of the origins, crises and alternatives to modern agriculture in New Zealand as well as the theoretical references that he uses to address these issues. ‘Hugh Campbell impressively ‘decolonises’ modern farming, disclosing its explicit and implicit powers, as embodied in material and ontological agency. Through the lens of colonisation of Mãori farming cultures, he foregrounds settler farming history as exemplary in forming capitalist value relations and modernist erasure of Indigenous socio-ecological practices. His unique reflexive narrative is a powerful account of modern farming’s bio-cultural override, challenging boundaries of industrial agriculture and critical scholarship alike.’ ‘This book changes the way we must understand and engage with the transformative powers and potentialities of farms and farming in any setting. The book’s brilliant account of the politics of land, people and biota of Aotearoa New Zealand since European colonisation shows that nothing about farms as socio-ecological projects is unchallengeable. He unashamedly frames the power of farms in terms of their visible and invisible powers centred on property. While an extremely robust even brutal expose, the book’s mission is to re-instate contemporary farms as sites of vitality, renewal, experiments and hope. This is the agri-food book of the 21st century.’