Philip McMichael

Last updated
Philip McMichael
Born
Philip David McMichael
NationalityAustralian
Academic work
Notable ideas Food regimes

Philip David McMichael is an Australian-born sociologist, known for his contributions to the field of Global Development. He is currently a professor emeritus at Cornell University. His research primarily focuses on world-historical development and social change, with a particular emphasis on transformations in the global food system and their political-ecological consequences.

Contents

Early life and education

McMichael completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Adelaide, South Australia, earning a Bachelor of Economics degree and a Bachelor of Arts degree with First Class Honors in Politics in 1972. He then moved to the United States to pursue a PhD in world-historical Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, starting in 1973. From 1977, McMichael taught at The University of New England (Australia), Swarthmore College, and the University of Georgia, prior to his appointment at Cornell University in 1988. [1]

Career

In 1985, McMichael received the Allan Sharlin Memorial Book Award from the Social Science History Association for his first book, "Settlers and the Agrarian Question: Foundations of Capitalism in Colonial Australia" (Cambridge University Press, 1984). [2] He has also authored six editions of his best-selling textbook,Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective (Sage, 1996–2017), now co-authored with Heloise Weber of the University of Queensland (2022, 2025).[ citation needed ]

McMichael served as Director of the International Political Economy Program in the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, Cornell University, from 1992 to 1999, and as Chair of Cornell’s Department of Development Sociology from 1999 to 2005 and again from 2014–15. He was also President of the Sociology of Agriculture and Food Research Committee (RC-40) for the International Sociological Association from 1998 to 2002.[ citation needed ]

In addition to his academic roles, McMichael has been involved in various international organisations. He served on a Scientific Advisory Council in the Food and Nutrition Division of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (2003–04) [3] and was recruited as an academic into the newly formed Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples' Mechanism in the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in 2011.[ citation needed ]

McMichael received the Outstanding Career Accomplishments Award, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University in 2021. [4] He is currently a Faculty Fellow at Cornell’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future. [5]

Research work

Over the course of his career, McMichael has made significant contributions to the field of sociology. He co-developed the concept of food regime analysis with Harriet Friedmann, a framework used to examine the changing patterns of global food provisioning across successive periods of British, US, and corporate hegemonies, and their socio-ecological impacts. [1] He also introduced the method of ‘incorporated comparison,’ which analysts use to examine interrelations among cases, such as states, conjunctures, and social movements, as they form and are formed within broader temporal/spatial orders. [6] [7]

Selected books

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

Agrarianism is a social and political philosophy that promotes subsistence agriculture, family farming, widespread property ownership, and political decentralization. Adherents of agrarianism tend to value traditional bonds of local community over urban modernity. Agrarian political parties sometimes aim to support the rights and sustainability of small farmers and poor peasants against the wealthy in society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rural sociology</span> Branch of sociology

Rural sociology is a field of sociology traditionally associated with the study of social structure and conflict in rural areas. It is an active academic field in much of the world, originating in the United States in the 1910s with close ties to the national Department of Agriculture and land-grant university colleges of agriculture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Food sovereignty</span> Food system

Food sovereignty is a food system in which the people who produce, distribute, and consume food also control the mechanisms and policies of food production and distribution. This stands in contrast to the present corporate food regime, in which corporations and market institutions control the global food system. Food sovereignty emphasizes local food economies, sustainable food availability, and centers culturally appropriate foods and practices. Changing climates and disrupted foodways disproportionately impact indigenous populations and their access to traditional food sources while contributing to higher rates of certain diseases; for this reason, food sovereignty centers indigenous peoples. These needs have been addressed in recent years by several international organizations, including the United Nations, with several countries adopting food sovereignty policies into law. Critics of food sovereignty activism believe that the system is founded on inaccurate baseline assumptions; disregards the origins of the targeted problems; and is plagued by a lack of consensus for proposed solutions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Via Campesina</span> International agricultural organization

La Vía Campesina is an international farmers organization founded in 1993 in Mons, Belgium, formed by 182 organisations in 81 countries, and describing itself as "an international movement which coordinates peasant organizations of small and middle-scale producers, agricultural workers, rural women, and indigenous communities from Asia, Africa, America, and Europe".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barrington Moore Jr.</span> American sociologist (1913–2005)

Barrington Moore Jr. was an American political sociologist, and the son of forester Barrington Moore.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Metabolic rift</span> Marxist conception of capitalist ecological crisis

Metabolic rift is a theory of ecological crisis tendencies under the capitalist mode of production that sociologist John Bellamy Foster ascribes to Karl Marx. Quoting Marx, Foster defines this as the "irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism". Foster argues that Marx theorized a rupture in the metabolic interaction between humanity and the rest of nature emanating from capitalist agricultural production and the growing division between town and country.

Benedict John Kerkvliet is Emeritus Professor at the Department of Political and Social Change, School of International, Political & Strategic Studies, Australian National University. He works across the areas of comparative politics, Southeast Asia and Asian studies. Kerkvliet was born and raised in Montana, surrounded by working-class relatives and friends for whom political discussion and debate were part of life. After graduating from the local public high schools, he earned his B.A. at Whitman College and his M.A. and Ph.D. at University of Wisconsin–Madison. He taught at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa) for nearly twenty years before joining the Australian National University in 1992 where he was a Professor and Head of the Department of Political and Social Change, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. Kerkvliet currently resides in Hawaiʻi with his wife Melinda.

Agrarian reform can refer either, narrowly, to government-initiated or government-backed redistribution of agricultural land or, broadly, to an overall redirection of the agrarian system of the country, which often includes land reform measures. Agrarian reform can include credit measures, training, extension, land consolidations, etc. The World Bank evaluates agrarian reform using five dimensions: (1) stocks and market liberalization, (2) land reform, (3) agro-processing and input supply channels, (4) urban finance, (5) market institutions.

Rural economics is the study of rural economies. Rural economies include both agricultural and non-agricultural industries, so rural economics has broader concerns than agricultural economics which focus more on food systems. Rural development and finance attempt to solve larger challenges within rural economics. These economic issues are often connected to the migration from rural areas due to lack of economic activities and rural poverty. Some interventions have been very successful in some parts of the world, with rural electrification and rural tourism providing anchors for transforming economies in some rural areas. These challenges often create rural-urban income disparities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agroecology in Latin America</span> Agroecological practices in Latin America

Agroecology is an applied science that involves the adaptation of ecological concepts to the structure, performance, and management of sustainable agroecosystems. In Latin America, agroecological practices have a long history and vary between regions but share three main approaches or levels: plot scale, farm scale, and food system scale. Agroecology in Latin American countries can be used as a tool for providing both ecological, economic, and social benefits to the communities that practice it, as well as maintaining high biodiversity and providing refuges for flora and fauna in these countries. Due to its broad scope and versatility, it is often referred to as "a science, a movement, a practice."

Eric Holt Giménez is an agroecologist, political economist, lecturer and author. From 1975 to 2002 he worked in Mexico, Central America and South Africa in sustainable agricultural development. During this time he helped to start the Campesino a Campesino Movement. He returned to the U.S. twice during this period: once for his M.Sc. in international agricultural development and then for his Ph.D. in environmental studies. His dissertation research was the basis for his first book Campesino a Campesino: Voices from the farmer-to-farmer movement for sustainable agriculture in Latin America. After receiving his Ph.D. with an emphasis in agroecology and political economy, he taught as a university lecturer at UC Santa Cruz and Boston University in the International Honors Program in Global Ecology. He gives yearly courses of food systems transformation and social movements in Italy in the Masters program of the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo and in the doctoral program at the Universidad de Antioquia in Medellín, Colombia. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Herald Tribune, Le Monde Diplomatique, La Jornada and The Des Moines Register. He has a blog on the Huffington Post.

Food regime theory is a broadly Marxist approach to theorising food systems. It was developed in the late 1980s by Harriet Friedmann and Philip McMichael. Food regime analysis is concerned with explaining, and therefore politicising, the strategic role of agriculture in the construction and development of the world capitalist economy. As a framework, it takes a historical view in order to identify stable periods of capital accumulation associated with particular configurations of geopolitical power and forms of agricultural production and consumption. Its theoretical roots are in French Regulation Theory and World Systems Theory.

Henry Bernstein is a British sociologist and Emeritus Professor of Development Studies at the University of London: School of Oriental and African Studies. He has worked for several decades on the political economy of agrarian change, social theory, peasant studies, land reform, and the rural economy in South Africa.

The Journal of Agrarian Change is a peer-reviewed academic journal established in 2001 covering agrarian political economy. The journal publishes historical and contemporary studies of the social relations and dynamics of production, power relations in agrarian formations and ownership structures and their processes of change.

Tom Brass is an academic who has written widely on peasant studies. For many years he was at the University of Cambridge as an affiliated lecturer in their Faculty of Social and Political Sciences and at Queens' College, Cambridge as their Director of Studies of the Social and Political Sciences. For many years he was an, and then the, editor of the Journal of Peasant Studies. Murray reports Brass as being "dismissive of the cultural turn in peasant studies" and the rise of post-modern perspectives and his notion that this has been a conservative process and that it has lent support to neoliberalism.

Agrarian socialism is a political ideology that promotes social ownership of agrarian and agricultural production as opposed to private ownership. Agrarian socialism involves equally distributing agricultural land among collectivized peasant villages. Many agrarian socialist movements have tended to be rural, locally focused, and traditional. Governments and political parties seeking agrarian socialist policies have existed throughout the world, in regions including Europe, Asia, North America, Latin America, and Africa.

Marc Edelman is an academic author and professor of anthropology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He was president of the American Ethnological Society from 2017 to 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geoffrey Lawrence (sociologist)</span> Australian sociologist and academic

Geoffrey Alan Lawrence is an Australian sociologist, academic and researcher. He is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Queensland.

Agrarian change is the process by which the political economy of the agrarian sector alters in some way. It involves changes in the social relations and dynamics of production, power relations in agrarian formations and ownership structures in the agricultural sector of an economy. The kind of dimensions covered in the study of this typically include not only technological and institutional forms such as agricultural productivity and farm-size and organisation; land reform; paths of capitalist transition; the politics of transnational agrarian social movements; the environmental contradictions of capitalist agriculture; global value chains and commodity certification schemes; the agrarian roots of violence and conflict; and migration and rural labour markets but also issues around gender, migration and rural labor markets, social differentiation and class formation.

Child Welfare: An Africentric Perspective is a 1991 book edited by Sandra Stukes Chipungu, Joyce E. Everett, and Bogart Leashore. The book was reviewed in the Journal of Marriage and Family. The 1994 edition of the book was reviewed in Social Work. It was reviewed in H-Net. A 2005 edition was reviewed in The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare.

References

  1. 1 2 "International development scholar Phil McMichael retires". Cornell University.
  2. "Allan Sharlin Memorial Book Award". Social Science History Association.
  3. "Philip David McMichael". CALS.
  4. "CALS award ceremony recognizes faculty, staff contributions". Cornell University.
  5. "Fellows Profile". Cornell Atkinson.
  6. "Philip McMichael: Making an impact in and beyond the classroom". Cornell University.
  7. Pereira, Laura. "The global food system still benefits the rich at the expense of the poor". The Conversation. Retrieved 2021-07-05.
  8. Clark, Brett (April 2015). "Food Regimes and Agrarian Questions, by PhilipMcMichael. Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2013. Pp. xii+196. $18.95 (pb). ISBN 978-1552665756". Journal of Agrarian Change. 15 (2): 296–298. Bibcode:2015JAgrC..15..296C. doi:10.1111/joac.12098. ISSN   1471-0358.
  9. Piazza, Gianni (January 2011). "Contesting Development: Critical Struggles for Social Change". Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews. 40 (1): 63–65. doi:10.1177/0094306110391764gg.
  10. Gibbs, Andrew (1 March 2011). "Review of Contesting Development: Critical Struggles for Social Change. Philip McMichael, Ed. Reviewed by Andrew Gibbs". The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare. 38 (1). doi:10.15453/0191-5096.3595. ISSN   0191-5096.
  11. Hytrek, Gary (October 2008). "Book Review: Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective". Teaching Sociology. 36 (4): 390–392. doi:10.1177/0092055X0803600409.
  12. George, Jose (May 1998). "Book reviews and notices : PHILIP McMICHAEL, Development and social change: A global perspective (Sociology for a new century series). Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press, 1996. xxiv + 310 pp. Figs., table, notes, refs., gloss., index. $17.95 (paperback)". Contributions to Indian Sociology. 32 (1): 139–140. doi:10.1177/006996679803200116. ISSN   0069-9667.