Deborah Barndt is a popular educator and photographer who teaches in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York
University in Toronto. For over 25 years, she has worked with social justice movements in Canada, the U.S., and
Central America. Her photographs have been published and exhibited widely, and her extensive publications include
Education and Social Change: A Photographic Study of Peru, To Change This House: Popular Education under the Sandinistas,
Naming the Moment: Political Analysis for Action, and Women Working the NAFTA Food Chain: Women, Food, and Globalization
(editor).
Where does our food come from? And what impact does its production have on the earth, on the women workers who
move it from field to table, and on all who eat it? Tangled Routes follows a corporate tomato from a Mexican field
through the United States to a Canadian table, examining in its wake the dynamic relationship between production
and consumption, work and technology, health and environment, bio-diversity and cultural diversity.
After tracing the tomato's journey through space and time (routes and roots), three case studies--a Mexican agribusiness,
a Canadian supermarket, and a U.S.-owned fast-food restaurant--offer a view of globalization from above (corporate
profiles), globalization from below (stories of women who plant, pick, pack, scan, slice, and sell tomatoes), and
"the other globalization" (acts of resistance and alternatives to the corporate model).
Tangled Routes grew out of a unique six-year collaborative project involving feminist academics, activists, and
popular educators from Mexico, the United States, and Canada. Written in an accessible style and integrating over
100 photographs, this critical introduction to complex issues ends with signs of hope--creative responses by local
and global movements for social justice and environmental sustainability.
Introduction: Roots and Routes
1. Across Space and Through Time: Tomatl Meets the Corporate Tomato
2. Frames and Filters: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches
3. Arch Deluxe with a Smile: Women Never Stop at McDonald's
4. You Can Count on Us: Scanning Cashiers at Loblaws Supermarkets
5. On the Move for Food: Truckers and Transnational Migrants
6. Picking and Packing for the North: Agricultural Workers at Empaque Santa Rosa
7. Crossing Sectors and Borders: Weaving a Holistic Analysis
