Overview

Most of my professional life has linked me to scholars interested in studying social change from a world-historical perspective. Consequently I have been active in the sections in the American Sociological Association concerned with comparative-historical analysis, and world-system analysis. I have also been active in the Global Development Section of the International Studies Association. I am currently associated with researchers in the International Sociological Association`s Research Committee on Food and Agriculture (past-president) and the Australia/New Zealand Agri-Food Research Network, as a base from which to study global and regional food systems. My research program follows in interest in world political-economic history, with a particular focus on food and agricultural systems. Trained as a historical sociologist, I work on the problem of situating and understanding food and agricultural systems in their world-historical context. This includes evaluating the costs and benefits of having an increasingly globalized food system, especially now with the rise of agrofuels. Another facet of this research concerns the institutional politics surrounding the organization of a global agriculture. My concern is to understand ways in which multilateral rule-making (eg, WTO, FTAs, TRIPs) conditions agricultures, food choices and food security (and therefore development possibilities).

Research Focus

Changing political relationships in the international food system across time, particularly during the recent era of globalization, and its impact on development trajectories. Responses to agrarian change and food regimes by peasant and landless movements across the developed and developing worlds.

Outreach and Extension Focus

Research on the impact of agrofuels development on the global food system and the global environment.

Instruction Focus

Political sociology of development. Historical methods. Sociology of Food International Development (Undergrad)

Additional Links

• Development Sociology
• Link to CALS Research portal
• Link to CALS Impact statements

Professional Activities

• "Food regimes and ecology, " Environment Studies Seminar Series, Cardiff University, Wales, September. - 2006
• "Feeding the World: Development and Ecology, " The Ecological Challenge and its Political Economy, Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University, February. - 2006
• "The World as a Stage: Rehearsing for Global Citizenship. " Annual Crimmel Colloquium on Liberal Education, St. Lawrence University. September. - 2005
• "Global Development and the Corporate Food Regime, " Symposium, International Rural Sociology Congress, Trondheim. July. - 2004
• "Dynamics of the Corporate Food Regime, " Keynote to NGO Conference on the global food system, in preparation for the 2005 WTO Ministerial in Hong Kong, Centre Oecumenique/World Council of Churches, Geneva, Switzerland, November. - 2004

Selected Publications

• Dia Da Costa and Philip McMichael. 2007. "The poverty of the global order, " Globalizations, 4 (4): 593-607. 2007
• Philip McMichael. 2007. "Globalization and the Agrarian World. " In The Blackwell Companion to Globalization, ed, George Ritzer (Blackwell). 2007
• Philip McMichael. 2007. "Global developments in the food system, " in Mark Lawrence and Anthony Worsley, eds, Public Health Nutrition: From Principles to Practice. (Allen & Unwin). Philip McMichael and Harriet Friedmann. 2007. "Situating the Retailing Revolution, " in Supermarkets and Agri-Food Supply Chains, eds, Geoffrey Lawrence and David Burch (Edward Elgar). 2007
• "Peasant Prospects in an Age of Neo-Liberalism, " New Political Economy, 11 (3): 407-418. 2006
• "Reframing development: global peasant movements and the new agrarian question, " Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 27 (4): 471-483. 2006
• "Feeding the World: development, agriculture and ecology, " Coming to Terms with Nature, eds, Leo Panitch and Colin Leys (Merlin). 2006
• "Alternative trade schemes. " In The Encyclopedia of Globalization, ed, Robertson, Roland, and Jan Aart Scholte (Routledge) 2006
• Entries: "Primitive Accumulation, " "Capitalism, " "Food, " in Encyclopedia of International Relations and Global Politics, ed, Tim Forsyth (Routledge). 2005
• "Food, " in The Future of Knowledge and Culture. A Dictionary for the 21st Century, eds, Vinay Lal and Ashis Nandy (Penguin/Viking). 2005
• "Globalization and Development Studies, " in Critical Globalization Studies eds, William Robinson and Richard Appelbaum (Routledge). 2005
• Sections in the Sociology of Global Development, with Frederick H. Buttel (Elsevier). 2005
• "Globalization. " In The Handbook of Political Sociology. States, Civil Societies and Globalization, eds, Thomas Janoski, Robert Alford, Alexander Hicks and Mildred Schwartz, (Cambridge). 2005
• "Globalization and Governance, " with Emelie Peine, in Agricultural Governance: Globalization and the New Politics of Regulation, eds, Vaughan Higgins and Geoffrey Lawrence (Routledge). 2005
• "Global Development and the Corporate Food Regime. " In Frederick H. Buttel and Philip McMichael, eds., New Directions in the Sociology of Global Development (Elsevier). 2005
• "Biotechnology and Food Security: Profiting from Insecurity? " in Global Tensions: Challenges and Opportunities in the World Economy, eds, Lourdes Beneria and Savitri Bisnath (New York: Routledge). 2004
• Looking Backward and Looking Forward: Perspectives on Social Science History, eds, Harvey Graff, Leslie Moch Page, and Philip McMichael (Duke University Press). 2004
• "Third Worldism and the Lineages of ?Global Fascism': the Regrouping of the Global South in the Neo-Liberal Era, " Third World Quarterly, 25 (1). 2004
• Entries: "Development, " "Structural Adjustment, " in An Encyclopedia of Development, ed, Martin Griffiths (Routledge). 2004
• Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press; 3rd edition). 2004
• "The Power of Food. " In Globalization, Localization and Sustainable Livelihoods, eds, Reidar Almas and Geoffrey Lawrence. Elsevier Press. 2003
• "Food Security and Social Reproduction, " in Power, Production and Social Reproduction, eds, Stephen Gill and Isabella Bakker (Palgrave MacMillan). 2003
• "Global Economic Policies, " in Challenges for Rural America, eds, David Brown and Louis Swanson (U. Penn State Press). 2003
• "Globalization: Myths and Realities, " in The New Political Economy of Globalization, eds, Richard Higgott & Anthony Payne (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar). 2003
• "Globalising Agriculture: Structures of Constraint for Australian Farming, " with Geoffrey Lawrence, in Lockie, S. and L. Bourke (eds) 2001. Rurality Bites: The Social and Environmental Transformation of Rural Australia. Sydney: Pluto Press. 2002
• "La Restructuration Globale des Systems Agro-Alimentaires, " Mondes en Developpment 30, 117:45-54 (Invited). 2002
• "The Impact of Globalisation, Free Trade and Technology on Food and Nutrition in the New Millennium, " Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 60(2). 2001
• "Revisiting the Question of the Transnational State, " Theory & Society 30(2). 2001
• "Global Food Politics, " in Hungry for Profit? eds, Fred Magdoff, Frederick H. Buttel, and John Bellamy Foster (NY: Monthly Review). 2000
• "Globalization: Myths and Realities, " reprint in From Modernization to Globalization. Perspectives on Development and Social Change, eds, J. T. Roberts & A. Hite (Blackwell). 2000
• "Globalization: Trend or Project? " In The New Global Political Economy, ed. Ronen Palan (London: Routledge). 2000
• "States and Governance in the Era of Globalization. " In Globalization and Social Change: The Intellectual Problem and MethodologicalConsiderations (eds), Jacques Hersch and Johannes Schmidt (London: Routledge). 2000
• "Sleepless Since Seattle: What is the WTO About? " Review of International Political Economy, 7(3). 2000
• "Agriculture and the State System: The Rise and Decline of National Agricultures, 1870 to the Present, " co-author: Harriet Friedmann, reprinted in Agricultural Policy, eds, Wyn P. Grant and John T.S. Keeler. (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar). 2000
• "A Global Interpretation of the Rise of the East Asian Agro-Food Import Complex, " World Development, 28(3). 2000
• "The Power of Food, " Agriculture and Human Values, 17. 2000
• "World-Systems Analysis, Globalization and Incorporated Comparison, " Journal of World-System Research, VI, 3. 2000

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