The Slow Food Story: Politics and Pleasure
Pluto Press 2008 (Order Now)
The Slow Food movement, set up in 1986 in Italy, has become one of the most significant and unusual social and political movements of modern times. It is often characterised as an association of gourmets but it has transformed itself into a serious global movement, with 84,000 members in over 120 countries and increasing links and influence in the developing world. Its originality lies in the unity between its gastronomic and ecological components and the belief in the ‘universal right to pleasure’. Slow Food provides a new dimension of cultural politics and challenges the assumptions of globalisation theorists and the norms of conventional policy-makers. In addition to original analysis and challenging arguments, the book also gives space to the voices of those who work and campaign for Slow Food.
This book (see book cover here) is also being published in North America by McGill-Queens University Press. For more details, you can contact Jacqueline Davis by email (jacqueline.davis@mcgill.ca ) or visit the Publicist's website at McGill-Queens University Press.
This is the story of how Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s richest man and media entrepreneur, came to power and ruled Italy for five years. His ‘postmodern populism’ exploited the long-term crisis in Italian politics and created a culture of illegality that turned Italy into the most degenerate body politic in Europe. These dark years brought post fascists and the xenophobic Northern League together as Berlusconi’s governing allies, yet there were also creative moments amongst the opposition. The girotondi led by the film director Nanni Moretti and anti mafia movements in Sicily were amongst the new ‘associationism’ which took root in civil society. Based on years of travelling and writing, the book provides original insight into Italy’s politics and culture in the Berlusconi era. 
This British Communist Party’s last years, a period of rapid change and reassessment until its ultimate dissolution in 1991, was also invigorated by new political currents. The book covers the period of the 1960s and 1970s when the party was influenced by new social and political movements, especially feminism and Eurocommunism, while the ideas of Antonio Gramsci began to shape the cultural politics of that time. It argues that the roots of the party’s decline cannot be reduced to the fortunes of the Soviet Union, but rather reflected some of the wider social, economic and cultural changes in Britain. Even at the moment of its demise, the Communist Party had important influence on the future of the British left, through its influential magazine Marxism Today.
Lawrence and Wishart 1991 