Philip McMichael

Philip David McMichael is an Australian-born sociologist, known for his contributions to the field of Global Development. He is currently a professor emeritus at Cornell University. His research primarily focuses on world-historical development and social change, with a particular emphasis on transformations in the global food system and their political-ecological consequences.

Early life and education

McMichael completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Adelaide, South Australia, earning a Bachelor of Economics degree and a Bachelor of Arts degree with First Class Honors in Politics in 1972. He then moved to the United States to pursue a PhD in world-historical Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, starting in 1973. From 1977, McMichael taught at The University of New England (Australia), Swarthmore College, and the University of Georgia, prior to his appointment at Cornell University in 1988. He has also authored six editions of his best-selling textbook,Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective (Sage, 1996–2017), now co-authored with Heloise Weber of the University of Queensland (2022, 2025).

McMichael served as Director of the International Political Economy Program in the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, Cornell University, from 1992 to 1999, and as Chair of Cornell’s Department of Development Sociology from 1999 to 2005 and again from 2014–15. He was also President of the Sociology of Agriculture and Food Research Committee (RC-40) for the International Sociological Association from 1998 to 2002.

In addition to his academic roles, McMichael has been involved in various international organisations. He served on a Scientific Advisory Council in the Food and Nutrition Division of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (2003–04) and was recruited as an academic into the newly formed Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples' Mechanism in the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in 2011.

McMichael received the Outstanding Career Accomplishments Award, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University in 2021. He is currently a Faculty Fellow at Cornell’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future.

Research work Over the course of his career, McMichael has made significant contributions to the field of sociology. He co-developed the concept of food regime analysis with Harriet Friedmann, a framework used to examine the changing patterns of global food provisioning across successive periods of British, US, and corporate hegemonies, and their socio-ecological impacts. He also introduced the method of ‘incorporated comparison,’ which analysts use to examine interrelations among cases, such as states, conjunctures, and social movements, as they form and are formed within broader temporal/spatial orders.

Selected books "Food Regimes and Agrarian Questions" (Fernwood Press, 2013) "Contesting Development: Critical Struggles for Social Change" (Routledge, 2010) Co-edited by Frederick H. Buttel "New Directions in the Sociology of Global Development" (Jai/Elsevier, 2005) "Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective" (6 editions, Pine Forge Press, 1996–2017) "The Global Restructuring of Agri-Food Systems" (Edited, Cornell University Press, 1994) "Settlers and the Agrarian Question: Foundations of Capitalism in Colonial Australia" (Cambridge University Press, 1984)

Selected publications "Does China’s ‘going out’ strategy prefigure a new food regime?" The Journal of Peasant Studies, 47 (1): 116–54, 2020 "Food system sustainability: questions of environmental governance in the new world (dis)order," Global Environmental Change, 21 (3): 804–12, 2011 "A food regime genealogy." The Journal of Peasant Studies, 36 (1): 139–169, 2009 "Global food crisis: causes and prospects for policy alternatives." UNRISD Flagship Report: Combating Poverty and Inequality, 2009 "Peasants make their own history, but not just as they please…," Journal of Agrarian Change, 8 (2/3): 205–228, 2008 "World-Systems Analysis, Globalization, and Incorporated Comparison," Journal of World System Research, VI (3): 68–99, 2000 "Incorporating Comparison within a World-Historical Perspective: An Alternative Comparative Method," American Sociological Review, 55 (3): 385–397, 1990 "Agriculture and the State System: The Rise and Decline of National Agricultures, 1870 to the Present," with Harriet Friedmann, Sociologia Ruralis, XIX (2): 93–117, 1989