The Englishman Looks at His Food

Infographics, Nature, and Global Order at the End of Empire

Dados Bibliográficos

ID12453046
AutoresAlma Igra (University of Amsterdam, autor correspondente)
Ano2026
Volume31
Fascículo2
Páginas000-000
Data de publicação2026-02-26
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEnvironmental History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1084-5453 • E-ISSN: 1930-8892
EditoraUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/740306
OpenAlexW7131622877
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas18

This article recovers a moment in environmental thinking that connected food, nature, and global order. It traces the rise of pictograms in food policy from the 1940s to the 1960s, a style of design that was popularized by an influential circle of political economists and left-wing politicians. Recovering the visual method through the archive of Otto Neurath and his British interlocutors, the article shows how visual statistics extended welfare reform discourse beyond unemployment and national insurance to encompass agriculture and environmental concerns. These ideas were part of international discussion on development, but they proved particularly impactful in Britain, which was navigating conversations about global natural resources at the end of empire. This thread of British environmental thought connected domestic social issues with global, postimperial development, as policymakers, economists, and illustrators worked through food and its visual representation to reimagine global ecological order

Agriculture · British Empire · Empire · Natural (archaeology · Order (exchange · Pictogram · Politics · Representation (politics · Unemployment · American History and Culture · Australian History and Society · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature