Audrey Bennett: New book on food security, equity, and justice

Stamps Professor Audrey Bennett has published ​“Critical Mapping for Sustainable Food Design: Food Security, Equity, and Justice,” a transdisciplinary book in the Routledge Studies in Food, Society and the Environment series.

The new book introduces critical mapping as a problematizing, reflective approach for analyzing systemic societal problems like food, scoping out existing solutions, and finding opportunities for sustainable design intervention.

“Critical Mapping for Sustainable Food Design: Food Security, Equity, and Justice” puts forth a framework entitled ​“wicked solutions” that can be applied to determine issues that designers should address to make real differences in the world and yield sustainable change. The book assesses the current role of design in attaining food security in a sustainable, equitable, and just manner. Accomplishing this goal is not simple; if it was, it would not be called a wicked problem. But this book shows how a particular repertoire of design tools can be deployed to find solutions and strategize the development of novel outcomes within a complex and interconnected terrain. To address the wicked problem of food insecurity, inequity, and injustice, this book highlights 73 peer-reviewed design outcomes that epitomize sustainable food design. This includes local and regional sustainable design outcomes funded or supported by public or private institutions and local and widespread design outcomes created by citizens. In doing so, this book sets the stage for an evidence-driven and evidence-informed design future that facilitates the designers’ visualization of wicked solutions to complex social problems, such as food insecurity. Drawing on an array of case studies from across the world, from urban rooftop farms and community cookers to mobile apps and food design cards, this book provides vitally important information about existing sustainable food design outcomes in a way that is organized, accessible, and informative.

This book will be of great interest to academics and professionals working in the field of design and sustainable food systems. Students interested in learning about food and sustainability from across design studies, food studies, innovation and entrepreneurship, urban studies, and global development will also find this book of great use.

“Critical Mapping for Sustainable Food Design: Food Security, Equity, and Justice” includes a foreword by Dr. Ron Eglash, Professor of Information and Art and Design, and includes work by MDES alumna Keesa Johnson.

Audrey G. Bennett is the Director of the Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability (DESIS) Lab at Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design and an inaugural University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is also a former Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Scholar of the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She studies the design of transformative images that, through interactive aesthetics, can permeate cultural boundaries and impact how we think and behave toward good social change. She was awarded the 2022 AIGA Steve Heller Prize for Cultural Commentary.

Critical Mapping for Sustainable Food Design: Food Security, Equity, and Justice | Routledge