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Walking through nearly any grocery store, contemporary American consumers are bound to encounter organic food. At any of the myriad of farmers’ markets that have sprung up in cities and small communities across the United States, shoppers can expect to see claims about the provenance and farming practices employed to grow everything from prized heirloom tomatoes to seemingly mundane heads of garlic. But behind the scenes, critical scholarship has shown that organic farming increasingly resembles the industrial food system organic pioneers set out to challenge. Faced with the pressures of the modern agricultural economy many farmers have conventionalized, intensifying how they farm in the face of tremendous competition and cost. Beyond the organic labels, emblazoned on products at the supermarket and the glistening bushel baskets arrayed in market stalls, are farmers, many of whom are trying to do their best to achieve sustainability in today’s food system. This book offers a glimpse into this world, through an ethnography of a small New England farm and the people who work in its fields. It sheds light on how small-scale farmers navigate the difficult terrain between ideals of sustainability and the economic realities of contemporary farming. Using new theories of economic sociology, this book moves beyond the current debates about the conventionalization of organic agriculture. Instead, it takes a relational approach to organic practices—investigating the complex ways market pressures, moral and emotional attachments, privilege, and personal relationships intersect to shape the everyday experiences of agriculture for today’s organic farmers and their consumers.

Everyone wants energy that is clean, cheap, and secure, goals which often conflict: traditional fossil fuels tend to be cheaper than alternative fuels, but they are hardly clean or (in the case of oil) secure. This book provides an explanation of the issues as well as sensible proposals for a truly sustainable energy policy. The author, an economist, points out that current energy policies are fatally flawed and that government policies should focus on “getting the prices right” so that the prices of fossil fuels reflect their true costs to society—including greenhouse gas and security costs. By using carbon and security taxes, alternative energy forms will be able to compete on a more even playing field against fossil fuels, which will unleash advances in alternative energy and conservation technologies, enabling the marketplace and consumers to find the right balance among energy sources that are cheap, clean, and secure.

This book provides a fresh perspective on the impact of multinational enterprises (MNEs) on host country development, and offers a contemporary and balanced assessment of the influence of multinationals on development. It questions some of the traditional development assumptions and paradigms, arguing that many are outmoded, outdated, and misguided. Drawing from recent research in international business and multinational management, the book brings a more microeconomic, “on the ground” focus to the mechanisms by which MNEs affect growth and development. It is about the relationship between MNEs and the poorer countries in the world, sometimes referred to as less-developed or developing economies, which include the poorer parts of Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America. Through the process of economic development, many of these countries have both increased their per capita incomes and improved the internal distribution of these incomes, moving into a smaller group of developing economies that are viewed as “emerging.” A key finding in the book is that on balance, MNEs contribute positively to the economic development of poorer and emerging economies—both directly and indirectly. Direct contributions emanate from the role of the MNE in bringing new knowledge assets to developing countries in the form of technology and managerial skills. A second conclusion of the book is that the FSAs of MNEs can help generate new capabilities and business competences in developing economies.

This book explores the philosophical and social environment in which the modern American corporation is grounded, and explains why, from a cultural perspective, the people should not expect the corporations to behave responsibly and accountably. The American corporation is a subject of wonder for the fabulous wealth that this protected capital has produced, freeing so many people to pursue other dreams and lead lives of greater meaning than merely making a living. It is a wonder, because, in these ways, modern American business corporations have created material well-being that allows so many people to live the eighteenth-century liberal ideal on which America was founded, an ideal of individual freedom, autonomy, and choice. However, the American corporation is also a subject of horror for the way its limited liability permits it to dump the costs of production onto those who are powerless to affect its conduct. The book examines the legal structure of the corporation in finer detail, demonstrating how each aspect of that structure contributes to some problems identified and suggesting ways in which an environment might be created in which managers, stockholders, and workers can use the best aspects of the structure to more likely assure responsible, long-term management. It also presents a brief examination of the nature of capitalism and its various forms.