Tangled Routes: Women, Work, and Globalization on the Tomato Trail

Where does our food come from? And what impact does its production have on the earth, on the women workers who move it from field to table, and on all who eat it? Tangled Routes follows a corporate—commodified and chemicalized—tomato from a Mexican field through the United States to a Canadian table, examining in its wake the dynamic relationship between production and consumption, work and technology, health and environment, biodiversity and cultural diversity.

After tracing the tomato's journey through space and time (routes and roots), three case studies—a Mexican agribusiness, a Canadian supermarket, and a U.S.-owned fast-food restaurant—offer a view of globalization from above (corporate profiles), globalization from below (stories of women who plant, pick, pack, scan, slice, and sell tomatoes), and 'the other globalization' (acts of resistance and alternatives to the corporate model).

Tangled Routes grew out of a unique six-year collaborative project involving feminist academics, activists, and popular educators from Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Written in an accessible style and illustrated with more than 100 photographs, this critical introduction to complex issues ends with signs of hope—creative responses by local and global movements for social justice and environmental sustainability.

FOR COPYRIGHT REASONS, THIS TITLE IS ONLY AVAILABLE IN CANADA