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Paper Instructions:

Book review of: Food Wars: "The Global Battle for Mouths, Minds and Markets"

Try to implement some theories from the lecture program (after general guidelines).

GENERAL GUIDELINES 

A review (or “critique”) of a book or article is not primarily a summary. Rather, it analyses, comments on and evaluates the work. As a course assignment, it situates the work in the light of specific issues and theoretical concerns being discussed in the course. Your review should show that you can recognise arguments and engage in critical thinking about the course content. Keep questions like these in mind as you read, make notes, and then write the review or critique. 

1. What is the specific topic of the book or article? What overall purpose does it seem to have? For what readership is it written? (Look in the preface, acknowledgements, reference list and index for clues about where and how the piece was originally published, and about the author's background and position). 

2. Does the author state an explicit thesis? Does he or she noticeably have an axe to grind? What are the theoretical assumptions? Are they discussed explicitly? (Again, look for statements in the preface, etc. and follow them up in the rest of the work). 

3. What exactly does the work contribute to the overall topic of your course? What general problems and concepts in your discipline and course does it engage with? 

4. What kinds of material does the work present (e.g. primary documents or secondary material, personal observations, literary analysis, quantitative data, biographical or historical accounts)? 

5. How is this material used to demonstrate and argue the thesis? (As well as indicating the overall argumentative structure of the work, your review could quote or summarize specific passages to describe the author's presentation, including writing style and tone). 

6. Are there alternative ways of arguing from the same material? Does the author show awareness of them? In what respects does the author agree or disagree with them? 

7. What theoretical issues and topics for further discussion does the work raise? 

8. What are your own reactions and considered opinions regarding the work? 

• Browse in published scholarly book reviews to get a sense of the ways reviews function in intellectual discourse. Look at journals in your discipline or general publications such as University of Toronto Quarterly, London Review of Books, or New York Review of Books (online at www.nybooks.com/archives/ ). 

• Some book reviews summarize the book's content briefly and then evaluate it; others integrate these functions, commenting on the book and using summary only to give examples. Choose the method that seems most suitable according to your professor's directions. 

• To keep your focus, remind yourself that your assignment is primarily to discuss the book's treatment of its topic, not the topic itself. Your key sentences should therefore say "This book shows...

Lecture 1 Introduction
The Relationship between management thinking & practice & the natural environment. The challenges of multi-disciplinarity, value pluralism and different levels of analysis. The range of managerial responses.

Lecture 2 The Nature & Origins of Contemporary Environmental Problems
The identification of the range of environmental issues & problems within a context of considerable scientific uncertainty & social conflict. An initial assessment of the contribution of corporate strategies to both the aetiology & amelioration of environmental problems.

Lecture 3 Understanding Sustainability
In 1987 the Brundtland commission offered a definition of sustainability that has strongly influenced subsequent analysis. Since then different approaches have emerged in ecological economics, organisation studies and ecology.

Lecture 4 Environmental Management Under Conditions of Uncertainty
In this lecture we explore the policy implications of conceptualising the natural environment as a complex system.

Lecture 5 Ecological Modernisation I: Managing Technology
Ecological modernisation features environmental innovation as means through which economy and ecology can be combined in win-win outcomes for individuals, organisations and societies, and in the long run lead to structural changes in economic activity. This lecture will explore the relevance of technological change to the amelioration of environmental problems.

Lecture 6 Ecological Modernisation II: Managing Waste
In this lecture we look draw on social and cultural theory to examine different approaches to understanding the management waste. Waste reduction and industrial symbiosis is a key concern of ecological modernisation and in this lecture we examine the practices associated with the local and global circulation of electronic waste.

Lecture 7 Corporate Social Responsibility
From the 1980’s there has been sustained pressure on organisations to take responsibility for the environmental damage to which they contribute. In this session we examine the history hopes and potentials for CSR.

Lecture 8 Divided We Stand
An introduction to cultural theory, the concept of plural rationalities and the implications for policy making.

Lecture 9 Green Economics
The adequacy of neoclassical economics is considered in the light of recent development s in ecological economics.