Cover Page

Resources Series

Peter Dauvergne & Jane Lister, Timber

Michael Nest, Coltan

Elizabeth R. DeSombre & J. Samuel Barkin, Fish

Jennifer Clapp, Food, 2nd edition

David Lewis Feldman, Water

Gavin Fridell, Coffee

Gavin Bridge & Philippe Le Billon, Oil

Derek Hall, Land

Ben Richardson, Sugar

Ian Smillie, Diamonds

Adam Sneyd, Cotton

Grains

BILL WINDERS














polity

For my mother and father,

Kathleen and David Winders

To whom I do not say “Thank You” enough.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to a number of people who helped me along the way to completing this project. Many people helped me work out the ideas in this book through numerous discussions and exchanges. A few of my colleagues at Georgia Tech regularly talk with me about this project, offering support and feedback: Dan Amsterdam, Doug Flamming, and Steve Usselman. As always, Rick Rubinson was an important source of insight, suggestions, and encouragement. Elizabeth Ransom helped to get me writing in the early stages of my work on this book. I presented Chapter 4 about the connection between grains and world hunger at the Rural Sociological Society annual meeting in 2015 and got important feedback and support from JoAnne Jaffee, Phil Howard, Doug Constance and Alex McIntosh, among others. Also in 2015, I presented Chapter 3 about grains and economic conflicts at the American Sociological Association annual meeting, and I am particularly grateful for the feedback and encouragement that I received there from Ray Jussaume and Kathleen Schwartzman. At Polity Press, I appreciate the guidance and patience that Louise Knight and Nekane Tanaka Galdos showed me as I worked on this book. I am also grateful for the valuable and insightful comments and suggestions given by two anonymous reviewers. And I appreciate the work that Clare Ansell, Susan Beer, and Jane Fricker did in editing the manuscript.

Finally, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Amy D’Unger, who bore the brunt of my focus on grains and need to share my ideas and new findings. She read and edited the entire manuscript, encouraged me as I worked on this book, and graciously covered for me around the house when work on this book consumed most of my time. Samuel and Violet understood when I needed some extra time or a bit more quiet to get just a little more writing done. It gives me joy and inspiration to see Sam working so hard on his own writing.

In the end, the responsibility for any errors or omissions belongs solely to me.