Winders Wins Awards for Academic Work on Food Politics

Bill Winders
Bill Winders

Associate professor of sociology in the School of History, Technology and Society has won two prestigious awards for publications on food politics.

William P. Winders, Associate Professor of Sociology in the School of History, Technology, and Society, has won two prestigious awards for publications on food politics.

For his 2009 book "The Politics of Food Supply: US Agricultural Policy in the World Economy" (Yale University Press), Winders won the 2011 Book Award from the Political Economy of the World-System (PEWS) section of the American Sociological Association. This annual award recognizes scholarship in global, international, or comparative sociology. In recognizing Winders, the award committee noted, "It was a competitive year for the book award, and we are pleased to recognize your work as particularly outstanding within this field."

Winders' article "The Vanishing Free Market: The Formation and Spread of the British and U.S. Food Regimes" (Journal of Agrarian Change, 2009), was recently recognized with the Bernstein & Byres Prize for Best Article in JAC in 2009. The article was judged on quality as works of political economy, analytical power, originality, and quality of evidence presented and its deployment. Winders' article builds upon the pioneering work of Harriet Friedman and Philip McMichael on international food regimes, by adding the politics of capital in differing agrarian branches within Britain and the United States, as well as considering the class alignments that underpinned the food regimes in those countries during their periods of hegemony in the capitalist world economy.