including adequate, varied, fresh food hasbecome a major problem. The North is losing itsskilled labour base, as those with transferableskills moved to more prosperous regions.

Chapters 3 to 9 provide well documented casestudies. Vuorinen examines the policy implica-tions of interregional migration on the Kola Pen-insula. Spies looks at labour relations on remoteoilfields and the regional consequences of theshift towards fly-in-fly-out operations. He alsoexamines the implications for individual well-being, family relations and community life in thiscontext of ‘radically spatialised work relations’.Prokhorova studies the community impacts of amultinational electronics manufacturer attractedto cheap female labour in a mining town close tothe Finnish border. Of all the case studies, themost comprehensive and informative are Rautioand Round’s scrutiny of the driving forces andoutcomes of socioeconomic change in theMurmansk and Magadan Oblasts. Piipponenconsiders possible divergent development pathsfor communities in the Karelian territorial forestproduction complex. Tykkylainen provides a sec-toral overview of energy resources, processingand transport. Myllyla, Andreev and Rautioevaluate development scenarios for the Mur-mansk Oblast using the Delphi method with indi-vidual interviews of selected informed local andinternational panellists.

The overviews provided by Heleniak (Chapter2) and by Tykkylainen (concluding chapter) arethought-provoking, knowledgeable appraisals ofregional and national incapacities. In additionto his sociodemographic analyses, cited above,Heleniak undertakes a shift-share analysis of1995–2004 employment change controlled byindustrial mix for most northern regions andfor Russia as a whole. Heleniak observes thatpost-Soviet national growth was based on naturalresource sectors, with northern regions well posi-tioned to capture growth from a favourableindustrial mix. He finds that the main factorscontributing to northern job loss were highlynegative regional competitive effects. Among thecomparative disadvantages were (formerly) highreal wages, poor and expensive transportationnetworks, a lack of universities and of R and D,and an absence of agglomeration economies.

While Tykkylainen also emphasises regionaldisadvantage and endorses Heleniak’s shift-share analysis, he places more emphasis on thevulnerability of a ‘one-sided, resource-basedeconomy’, particularly given Russia’s incapaci-ties compared with China and other emerging

economies. In considering regional futures, henotes not only sensitivity to global businesscycles but also to the vagaries and unpredict-ability of the national policy decisions and lob-bying. Tykkylainen has an intimate knowledge ofspatially and sectorally differentiated compo-nents of change on the Northern Edge and ofnational and global driving forces. In consideringfuture directions, he provides an authoritative cri-tique of the Russian economic system, notingthat it ‘has not been very innovative in recentyears and one reason for this has been the inter-nationally isolated and domestically departmen-talized research and development tradition inwhich research was not driven by demand andtook place within bureaucratic state organiza-tions, often in closed cities without proper linksto enterprises or possibilities for networking’(p. 217).

Remote, marginal regions are sensitive tochanging economic fortunes, national prioritiesand the structure of the national socioeconomicsystem. As well revealed in this volume, out-comes in Russia’s northern regions present starkevidence of this sensitivity.

John HolmesThe University of Queensland

Australia

Food Fears: From Industrial to SustainableFood SystemsAlison Blay-Palmer, Ashgate, Aldershotand Burlington, 2008, 185 pp, ISBN9780754672487 (hardback), Stg£55.00.

Concerns over food continue to plague the world.Despite advances in modern farming, processingand transport technologies, problems of foodinsecurity in the less developed world jar withthe superabundance, hence glut and waste ofwealthier nations. Quality rather than quantitydefines the debate here, though, with widespreadunease about the origins and safety of what weconsume, and growing anxiety over geneticallymodified organisms (GMOs), livestock diseasesand food-borne illness, for example, as well asproblems of our fast food society includingexplosive rates of obesity, diabetes and bowelcancer. Such issues underpin Alison Blay-Palmer’s Food Fears and its exploration of theills behind contemporary critiques of industrialfood production and consumption systems andthe search for more sustainable alternatives.

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Geographers and others have long stressedthe importance of place and power, spatialapproaches to the political economy, differentmodes of regulation and governance, and rela-tional ontologies in the agrifood chain. Theirefforts have been critical in assessing the globali-sation of food, understanding the shift towardsmore local production, and exploring prospectsof other food systems (e.g., Morgan et al., 2006).This work now comprises a significant corpusand provides the framework for Food Fears.Indeed, the book is situated explicitly in relationto it. It is also part of an ongoing collaborationwith Betsy Donald as three of its eight chaptersare co-authored with her and draw on similarwork (Blay-Palmer and Donald, 2006; 2007;Donald and Blay-Palmer, 2006). Yet Food Fearsis just a beginning, too, as it hints at projects tocome.

From its opening observation that ‘Our main-stream food system is breaking down’ (p. 1)through to the conclusion that ‘By building acommunity-centred food system based on prin-ciples of mutual cooperation, we capture theopportunity to embed the celebration of food intoour communities and lives’ (p. 154), Food Fearsis a call to action. Therefore, it is not overlytheoretical, and instead quite simply a very inter-esting and engaging piece of work. It is written ineasy, unpretentious style, effusing an honest andpersonable manner which invites the reader intothis all-important conversation. Its author alsopresents the subject matter at multiple scales asshe links what are termed local, quotidian, per-sonal, embodied and ethical acts of eating withmore abstract and global (or at least distancedand often poorly understood) systems of foodproduction.

Food Fears quickly establishes the agrifoodcontext intimated above, and situates relatedfears with respect also to the human-naturedivide and the rise of risk society (in chapter 1).Blay-Palmer then describes (in chapter 2) ahistory of the modern food system, which wasdriven by realisations about the extent of foodadulteration in the late nineteenth century,and developments in its protection with theemergence of food regulation, health science,commercialisation and technological fixes toindustrial food problems. Chapter 3 examines theincreased processing of food at a distance fromconsumers, and thus the rise of product market-ing and branding (with case studies of Kelloggs,M&S and President’s Choice from the US, UKand Canada, respectively). The next chapter

looks at economic and ecological pressures onfarming practices with controversies and mistrustover the use of GMOs, and with scaled up opera-tions and sustainability issues such as E. coli andCampylobacter jejuni contamination linked topoor water management. Then chapter 5 positsfood as an actor in food scares and providesseveral important, recent case studies, which arereasonably detailed and range from BSE or ‘madcow’ outbreaks through to the threatened avianinfluenza or ‘bird flu’ pandemic.

The last three chapters of Food Fears arebracketed together by Blay-Palmer as a secondpart of the book. They concern alternatives to theprevailing system and start with a focus on theconsumers. Chapter 6 examines societal fearssince 9–11, and the advent of food sovereigntyand bio-terrorism, and as a result, the consumerpreference for organics. With references to bothBeck’s risk thesis and Foucault’s notion of gov-ernmentality, here some of the most fascinatingdetails concern the military’s interest in nutritionand the wartime-style response evident in thedevelopment of Track and Trace technology usedto monitor processed foods in the US. The pen-ultimate chapter suggests that the alternativefood industry has responded incrementally tofood safety issues and so ‘plays into the hands ofthe industrial’ (p. 121). This important insightabout a reconnection between food systems hasbeen picked up elsewhere including by Wattset al. (2005). Here Blay-Palmer (p. 130) exploresWal-Mart’s development of successful strategiesfor marketing with more personalised staff andlocal gestures toward corporate responsibilityin supporting the revitalisation of a Chicagoneighbourhood, and the response to HurricaneKatrina, for example, but she concludes thata tacit consumer knowledge de-legitimises any‘Wal-Martisation’ of alternative food retailing.However, the significance of an interpenetrationof conventional and alternative, which structuresthe seminal work by Morgan et al. (2006) is per-sistent and echoed too in Food Fear’s lastchapter on ‘mutual food systems’. After its clearsummary statements, chapter 8 then also pro-vides a survey of recent food system innovationswhich tellingly identifies the more promisingones as cooperative and unregulated, grassrootsventures.

The book has international coverage (and rel-evance) but focuses on Canada, the US and UK.Australia appears only once in the index withthe mention of its possible exposure to BSE,embroilment in international trade and disputes

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particularly with the US (p. 100). Italy likewisereceives only passing attention. It is mentioned inthe introductory and concluding chapters (p. 2and p. 152), providing bookend references thereto the slow food movement. Yet it has been sucha stellar phenomenon (in Italy but also in France,for example) that the brief treatment will possi-bly leave readers unsated. Failure to refer togroundbreaking research on public procurementby Kevin Morgan (2007) and Morgan withRoberta Sonnino (2008), which includes theUnited Nations school programme in developingcountries as well as school projects in London,New York and Rome, is also disappointing. It issurprising given the references to earlier publica-tions by both authors, too, plus the key roleplayed by Morgan and whom Blay-Palmerthanks for ‘unflinching mentor support and guid-ance’ (p. ix). There are other important new areasof research that are not explored here as much asone might expect or hope, if discussed at all,extending to subjects such as food miles and theimpacts of and contests over biofuels. Other criti-cisms of Food Fears include the surfeit of acro-nyms which is problematic with no glossary, aswell as the heavy peppering of inconsistencies,short cuts, errors and omissions in the referencelist. But these are small grudges though com-pared with the rewards of reading the book. AsBlay-Palmer makes explicit, the focus in FoodFears is on Canadian and US empirical materialand its presentation here is outstanding.

Whilst Food Fears reiterates many of the inci-dents of recent years that have made food scaressuch a widespread and contemporary issue, itprovides some compelling new case studies andimportant insights (albeit mostly from NorthAmerica). It also relates this material in a theo-retically informed context that pays homage toANT (Actor-Network Theory), for example, andhybrid post-humanist ontologies advanced bypeople such as Sarah Whatmore and JohnMurdoch, but it does so without subjecting thereader to an impenetrable jargon or excess con-ceptualisation. In fact, some most pleasing, reve-latory, and inspiring aspects of the book includeits optimism and concern for real people, andtheir thoughts and actions, especially in strivingto create the spaces of an alternative foodeconomy. These qualities are amongst the book’sgreatest strengths. They are the main reasons,too, why I will encourage undergraduate studentsenrolled in a third-year unit that I teach, whichexplores the links between sustainability andactive citizenship, to read this work.

REFERENCESBlay-Palmer, A. and Donald, B., 2007: Manufacturing fear:

the role of food processors and retailers in constructingalternative food geographies in Toronto, Canada. In Maye,D., Holloway, L. and Kneafsey, M. (eds) Alternative FoodGeographies: Representation and Practice. Elsevier,Oxford and Amsterdam, 273–88.

Blay-Palmer, A. and Donald, B., 2006: A tale of three toma-toes: the rise of the new food economies in GreaterToronto. Economic Geography 82, 383–99.

Donald, B. and Blay-Palmer, A., 2006: The urban creativefood economy: producing food for the urban elite or socialinclusion opportunity? Environment and Planning A 38,1901–20.

Morgan, K., 2007: Greening the Realm: Sustainable FoodChains and the Public Plate. The Centre for BusinessRelationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society(BRASS) Working Paper Series No. 43, Cardiff University,Cardiff.

Morgan, K., Marsden, T. and Murdoch, J., 2006: Worlds ofFood: Place, Power and Provenance in the Food Chain.Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Morgan, K. and Sonnino, R., 2008: The School Food Revo-lution: Public Food and the Challenge of SustainableDevelopment. Earthscan, London.

Watts, D.C.H., Ilbery, B. and Maye, D., 2005: Making recon-nections in agro-food geography: alternative systems offood provision. Progress in Human Geography 29, 22–40.

Stewart WilliamsUniversity of Tasmania

Australia

The City as a Terminal: The Urban Context ofLogistics and Freight TransportMarcus Hesse, Ashgate Publishing Company,Aldershot, 2008, xvi + 207 pp, ISBN9780754609131 (hardback), Stg£55.00.

Cities are focal points for both social and eco-nomic interaction. Most of the manufacture andfinal consumption of goods in western nationstake place in urban regions. The implementationof new technologies, the evolution of organisa-tional structures, and changing patterns ofdemand, transport options and costs, labour, andspatial relations in urban regions are altering thedynamics of goods distribution.

An example of the influence of these changesis provided by the emergence of the aerotropolis– an urban area serving the interests of grow-ing clusters of travel-intensive businesses, andtime-sensitive goods-processing and distributionfacilities around key airports (Kasarda, 2000/2001). The genesis of an aerotropolis as part ofthe Australia TradeCoast precinct at the mouthof the Brisbane River is due to a combination ofgeographic factors – the availability of vacantindustrial land well-serviced by road and rail

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