Future Food Imaginaries in Global Climate Fiction

The purpose of Future Food Imaginaries in Global Climate Fiction is to study how the genre climate fiction imagines that human society will respond and adapt to the profound and imminent transformation of current food systems.

The project analyzes climate fiction from three different regions where the climate crisis is experienced very differently: the Nordic countries, North America and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Theoretically and methodologically, the project combines ecocritical, postcolonial and intermedial perspectives with Critical Food Studies.

The project is motivated by climate research that shows that the present food system must be transformed to halt the erosion of planetary resources and ensure access to food (Willett et al., 2019).

This transformation entails a major systemic transition away from meat-heavy, industrialized diets towards a plant-oriented regime, but it also comprises a significant cultural challenge since food and the way people eat are intimately tied to heritage and identity.

As the only type of media that provides extensive imaginative “insights into how it might be to feel and understand” (Andersen, 2020, p. 1) in a climate-transformed future, climate fiction predicts the influence of such ties.

The results are an important contribution to climate fiction scholarship, and can also help stakeholders and climate science initiatives understand how people across the world will respond to, or even provoke, changes in food and eating.