Nils McCune | University of Michigan (original) (raw)

Papers by Nils McCune

AGROECOLOGY AND SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEMS, 2020

Latin America is known for social movement organization andinnovation, and for dialog among differ... more Latin America is known for social movement organization andinnovation, and for dialog among different types of knowledge(‘
dialogo de saberes’
). This has included dialog between aca-demic knowledges framed by Western science, popular andancestral ‘peoples’ knowledges and wisdoms,’ and so-called
critical thought
from global and Latin American revolutionarytraditions. From these conditions, we postulate thata specifically Latin American agroecology has emerged fromthese dynamics. While the global academy recognizes thatagroecology is simultaneously a science (in the Westernsense), a movement, and a practice, it is the emergent LatinAmerican version that is the most politically charged and popu-larly organized. This contribution uses a survey of selected LatinAmerican agroecologists to evaluate the extent to which sucha
critical Latin American agroecology
actually exists, and if so,what its characteristics are.

EduCação do CaMpo e MoViMentos soCiais, 2019

En los procesos territoriales de resistencia y transformación, los movimientos sociales del campo... more En los procesos territoriales de resistencia y transformación, los movimientos sociales del campo cada mas plantean la agroecología como elemento clave en una agricultura campesina ecológica, encaminado junto con la reforma agraria y la defensa de la tierra y el territorio a la construcción de la soberanía alimentaria en armonía con la Madre Tierra. Pero transformar una agricultura campesina – muchas veces atrapada en modelos tecnológicos derivados de la Revolución Verde (monocultivo, semillas comerciales, fertilizantes químicos, agrotóxicos, etc.) en una producción agroecológica, requiere procesos de formación humana, de la base campesina, además de procesos sociales que estimulan el intercambio, innovación y socialización horizontal de prácticas productivas alternativas.

Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 2019

In this article we use a food sovereignty frame to analyze the role of the State in favoring agro... more In this article we use a food sovereignty frame to analyze the role of the State in favoring agroecological scaling, particularly in Cuba and in the Latin American countries that elected leftist governments in the first years of the 21st century and currently face an upsurge of right-wing political forces. As with social movement participation in international governance structures, at the national level social movements face risks when they allow themselves to become absorbed in collaborations with the State in order to build public policy for taking agroecology to scale. By participating in the institutionalization of agroecology, movements become part of the established rules of the game, having to move within limits defined by a system that exists to preserve the interests of the dominant class. On the other hand, by boycotting the arena of governance, agroecological movements allow resurgent political and economic elites to grab land, territories and resources needed for agroecological food systems to ever become a global substitute for industrial agriculture. At the heart of the matter is the political character of agroecology: shall we continue betting on reform, in times of (counter) revolution? KEYWORDS Scaling-up agroecology; political agroecology; the state; social movements; the right CONTACT Omar Felipe Giraldo

Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems Agroecology and La Via Campesina II. Peasant agroecology schools and the formation of a sociohistorical and political subject, 2019

Scaling up of peasant agroecology and building food sovereignty require major transformations tha... more Scaling up of peasant agroecology and building food sovereignty require major transformations that only a self-aware, critical, collective political subject can achieve. The global peasant movement, La Via Campesina (LVC) in its expression in Latin America, the Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo (CLOC), employs agroecology and political training or formation as a dispositive or device to facilitate the emergence of a sociohistorical and political subject, the “agroecological peasantry,” designed to be capable of transforming food systems across the globe. In this essay, we examine the pedagogical philosophies and practices used in the peasant agroecology schools and training processes of LVC and CLOC, and how they come together in territorial mediation as a dispositive for pedagogical-educational, agroecological reterritorialization.

Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 2019

This paper examines the relationship between agroecological scaling andthe agrarianquestion,based... more This paper examines the relationship between agroecological scaling andthe agrarianquestion,based on PuertoRico’s contradictoryagriculturalanddemographictendenciesintheaftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. We find that labor-based intensification, literally rebuilding and recovering the diversity of farms devastated by the hurricanes, is a necessary step toward scaling out agroecology in Puerto Rico. The rebuilding of farms requires bothamplemanuallaborandaccumulatedlocalknowledge,two elements which are difficult to bring together in Puerto Rico due to a complex interplay of historical and social factors. Decades of public policy based on the belief that the small farmer is not essential to Puerto Rico have produced a series of obstacles for farmers who wish to recover their farms. The peasant economy, a field of study that recognizes peasant farmers as capable subjects of their own historical resistance – within and against economies of empire – can be a powerful tool in the effort to recover local food systems and (re)create a vibrant small farmer sector. Here, we explore peasant balances, a capacity to aggregate daily farm management decisions into coherent, multifunctional economic strategies that allow for dynamic responses to changing environmental, social and market conditions, and how these balances relate to Puerto Rican coffee farmers’ capacity to stayonthelandandtransitiontowardagroecologicalproduction. Fieldwork included qualitative interviews with leaders of small farmers’ organizations, Puerto Rican government officials and farmers in the mountainous central region between August 2017 and March 2018.

This contribution traces the parallel development of two distinct approaches to peasant agroecolo... more This contribution traces the parallel development of two distinct approaches to peasant agroecological education: the peasant-to-peasant horizontal method that disseminated across Mesoamerica and the Caribbean beginning in the 1970s, and the political-agroecological training schools of combined consciousness-building and skill-formation that have been at the heart of the educational processes of member organizations of La Via Campesina since the 1990s. Applying a theoretical framework that incorporates territorial struggle, agroecology and popular education, we examine spatial and organizational aspects of each of these models for peasant education and movement-building. Recognizing that the models, their respective contexts, and the dialectical relationships therein have been in constant evolution, we share findings on the movement-place as a territorial system with socio-historical subjectivity, that is, peasant movements as territorially-embedded, collective historical actors. This leads to some conclusions in moving past educational theory that has centered upon individual subjects, and approaching a conception of territory as a subject of learning processes.

Agroecological scaling-up, as the words suggest, is best achieved as a process constructed 'from ... more Agroecological scaling-up, as the words suggest, is best achieved as a process constructed 'from below'. How then to understand the political dimension of agroecological scaling, if not also as a popular process of democratization of food systems? This article explores the political and social dimensions of the Nicaraguan process of agroecological scaling, using the frame of food sovereignty, or the right of peoples and nations to define, build, and defend their own food system. As part of the ALBA alliance of Latin American countries, Nicaragua's government positions itself to the political left of many of the more neoliberal governments in the region. Post-neoliberalism provides a historical context for the repositioning of the state in regard to peasant and family agriculture, rural education, and social economies. As agroecological knowledge is reproduced , shared and multiplied, agroecological organizational structures become essential to scaling-out and scaling-up processes. We discuss the role of the state in determining the popular diffusion of agroeco-logical methods and thinking across the Nicaraguan countryside.

Across the globe, the countryside faces the "generation problem": Who will grow food when the cur... more Across the globe, the countryside faces the "generation problem": Who will grow food when the current generation of aging small farmers and peasants disappears? A combination of objective and subjective factors effectively discourages young people from assuming the continuity of peasant and family farming, especially in countries that have experienced significant neoliberal dismantling of rural infrastructure and education. Rural social movements are increasingly building educational processes linked with small-scale, ecological farming in the hopes of reinforcing the development of identities and skills for peasant futures and cadre in the struggle for popular land reform, agroecology, and food sovereignty.

Across the globe, the countryside faces the "generation problem": Who will grow food when the cur... more Across the globe, the countryside faces the "generation problem": Who will grow food when the current generation of aging small farmers and peasants disappears? A combination of objective and subjective factors effectively discourages young people from assuming the continuity of peasant and family farming, especially in countries that have experienced significant neoliberal dismantling of rural infrastructure and education. Rural social movements are increasingly building educational processes linked with small-scale, ecological farming in the hopes of reinforcing the development of identities and skills for peasant futures and cadre in the struggle for popular land reform, agroecology, and food sovereignty.

The Spanish word formación can be translated as 'training' or 'education', but Latin American soc... more The Spanish word formación can be translated as 'training' or 'education', but Latin American social movements use it as inspired by Che Guevara's notion of 'molding' the values of the new woman and new man for egalitarian, cooperative social relations in the construction of a 'new society'. This contribution presents findings on the dialectical linkages between the formación processes led by the Rural Workers' Association (ATC) and the gradual transformation of the Nicaraguan countryside by peasant families choosing to grow food using agroecological practices. We use Vygotsky's sociocultural historical theory to explore the developmental processes of formación subjects and the pedagogical mediators of their transformation into movement cadre. The motivations of active learners to develop new senses and collective understandings about their material reality become a counterhegemonic process of internalization and socialization of agroecological knowledges and senses. In this paper, we further explore the formación process by identifying territorial mediators: culturally significant elements within and outside of individuals that facilitate the rooting of agroecological social processes in a given territory where the social movement is active. By placing the territory, rather than the individual, at the center of popular education processes, new synergies are emerging in the construction of socially mobilizing methods for producing and spreading agroecological knowledge.

Encyclopedia of Politics of the American West, 2013

Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 08039410 2012 666215, Apr 19, 2012

La Pensée

Nature reserves are a commonly-used policy for biodiversity conservation in Latin America, but en... more Nature reserves are a commonly-used policy for biodiversity conservation in Latin America, but environmental laws can run contrary to customs and practices of resource-dependent communities. This paper examines conflicting frameworks of resource management and governance in an agricultural community's efforts to comply with federal policies against land burns in a nature reserve of Chiapas, Mexico. In the community of California, resource management is a key locus where local governance structures come into conflict with hierarchical state power in Mexico. Participatory workshops and semi-structured interviews were primary research instruments for discovery of community perspectives on the nature reserve, land use, and local governance. In areas where state-led conservation efforts limit land use, resource-dependent communities defend their access rights, while they also determine how to collectively and sustainably manage their own

Forum for Development Studies, 2012

Area, 2012

... Food security and global environmental change – Edited by John Ingram, Polly Ericksen and Dia... more ... Food security and global environmental change – Edited by John Ingram, Polly Ericksen and Diana Liverman. Beth Bee. Article first published online: 23 JAN 2012. ... More content like this. Find more content: like this article. Find more content written by: Beth Bee. ...

AGROECOLOGY AND SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEMS, 2020

Latin America is known for social movement organization andinnovation, and for dialog among differ... more Latin America is known for social movement organization andinnovation, and for dialog among different types of knowledge(‘
dialogo de saberes’
). This has included dialog between aca-demic knowledges framed by Western science, popular andancestral ‘peoples’ knowledges and wisdoms,’ and so-called
critical thought
from global and Latin American revolutionarytraditions. From these conditions, we postulate thata specifically Latin American agroecology has emerged fromthese dynamics. While the global academy recognizes thatagroecology is simultaneously a science (in the Westernsense), a movement, and a practice, it is the emergent LatinAmerican version that is the most politically charged and popu-larly organized. This contribution uses a survey of selected LatinAmerican agroecologists to evaluate the extent to which sucha
critical Latin American agroecology
actually exists, and if so,what its characteristics are.

EduCação do CaMpo e MoViMentos soCiais, 2019

En los procesos territoriales de resistencia y transformación, los movimientos sociales del campo... more En los procesos territoriales de resistencia y transformación, los movimientos sociales del campo cada mas plantean la agroecología como elemento clave en una agricultura campesina ecológica, encaminado junto con la reforma agraria y la defensa de la tierra y el territorio a la construcción de la soberanía alimentaria en armonía con la Madre Tierra. Pero transformar una agricultura campesina – muchas veces atrapada en modelos tecnológicos derivados de la Revolución Verde (monocultivo, semillas comerciales, fertilizantes químicos, agrotóxicos, etc.) en una producción agroecológica, requiere procesos de formación humana, de la base campesina, además de procesos sociales que estimulan el intercambio, innovación y socialización horizontal de prácticas productivas alternativas.

Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 2019

In this article we use a food sovereignty frame to analyze the role of the State in favoring agro... more In this article we use a food sovereignty frame to analyze the role of the State in favoring agroecological scaling, particularly in Cuba and in the Latin American countries that elected leftist governments in the first years of the 21st century and currently face an upsurge of right-wing political forces. As with social movement participation in international governance structures, at the national level social movements face risks when they allow themselves to become absorbed in collaborations with the State in order to build public policy for taking agroecology to scale. By participating in the institutionalization of agroecology, movements become part of the established rules of the game, having to move within limits defined by a system that exists to preserve the interests of the dominant class. On the other hand, by boycotting the arena of governance, agroecological movements allow resurgent political and economic elites to grab land, territories and resources needed for agroecological food systems to ever become a global substitute for industrial agriculture. At the heart of the matter is the political character of agroecology: shall we continue betting on reform, in times of (counter) revolution? KEYWORDS Scaling-up agroecology; political agroecology; the state; social movements; the right CONTACT Omar Felipe Giraldo

Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems Agroecology and La Via Campesina II. Peasant agroecology schools and the formation of a sociohistorical and political subject, 2019

Scaling up of peasant agroecology and building food sovereignty require major transformations tha... more Scaling up of peasant agroecology and building food sovereignty require major transformations that only a self-aware, critical, collective political subject can achieve. The global peasant movement, La Via Campesina (LVC) in its expression in Latin America, the Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo (CLOC), employs agroecology and political training or formation as a dispositive or device to facilitate the emergence of a sociohistorical and political subject, the “agroecological peasantry,” designed to be capable of transforming food systems across the globe. In this essay, we examine the pedagogical philosophies and practices used in the peasant agroecology schools and training processes of LVC and CLOC, and how they come together in territorial mediation as a dispositive for pedagogical-educational, agroecological reterritorialization.

Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 2019

This paper examines the relationship between agroecological scaling andthe agrarianquestion,based... more This paper examines the relationship between agroecological scaling andthe agrarianquestion,based on PuertoRico’s contradictoryagriculturalanddemographictendenciesintheaftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. We find that labor-based intensification, literally rebuilding and recovering the diversity of farms devastated by the hurricanes, is a necessary step toward scaling out agroecology in Puerto Rico. The rebuilding of farms requires bothamplemanuallaborandaccumulatedlocalknowledge,two elements which are difficult to bring together in Puerto Rico due to a complex interplay of historical and social factors. Decades of public policy based on the belief that the small farmer is not essential to Puerto Rico have produced a series of obstacles for farmers who wish to recover their farms. The peasant economy, a field of study that recognizes peasant farmers as capable subjects of their own historical resistance – within and against economies of empire – can be a powerful tool in the effort to recover local food systems and (re)create a vibrant small farmer sector. Here, we explore peasant balances, a capacity to aggregate daily farm management decisions into coherent, multifunctional economic strategies that allow for dynamic responses to changing environmental, social and market conditions, and how these balances relate to Puerto Rican coffee farmers’ capacity to stayonthelandandtransitiontowardagroecologicalproduction. Fieldwork included qualitative interviews with leaders of small farmers’ organizations, Puerto Rican government officials and farmers in the mountainous central region between August 2017 and March 2018.

This contribution traces the parallel development of two distinct approaches to peasant agroecolo... more This contribution traces the parallel development of two distinct approaches to peasant agroecological education: the peasant-to-peasant horizontal method that disseminated across Mesoamerica and the Caribbean beginning in the 1970s, and the political-agroecological training schools of combined consciousness-building and skill-formation that have been at the heart of the educational processes of member organizations of La Via Campesina since the 1990s. Applying a theoretical framework that incorporates territorial struggle, agroecology and popular education, we examine spatial and organizational aspects of each of these models for peasant education and movement-building. Recognizing that the models, their respective contexts, and the dialectical relationships therein have been in constant evolution, we share findings on the movement-place as a territorial system with socio-historical subjectivity, that is, peasant movements as territorially-embedded, collective historical actors. This leads to some conclusions in moving past educational theory that has centered upon individual subjects, and approaching a conception of territory as a subject of learning processes.

Agroecological scaling-up, as the words suggest, is best achieved as a process constructed 'from ... more Agroecological scaling-up, as the words suggest, is best achieved as a process constructed 'from below'. How then to understand the political dimension of agroecological scaling, if not also as a popular process of democratization of food systems? This article explores the political and social dimensions of the Nicaraguan process of agroecological scaling, using the frame of food sovereignty, or the right of peoples and nations to define, build, and defend their own food system. As part of the ALBA alliance of Latin American countries, Nicaragua's government positions itself to the political left of many of the more neoliberal governments in the region. Post-neoliberalism provides a historical context for the repositioning of the state in regard to peasant and family agriculture, rural education, and social economies. As agroecological knowledge is reproduced , shared and multiplied, agroecological organizational structures become essential to scaling-out and scaling-up processes. We discuss the role of the state in determining the popular diffusion of agroeco-logical methods and thinking across the Nicaraguan countryside.

Across the globe, the countryside faces the "generation problem": Who will grow food when the cur... more Across the globe, the countryside faces the "generation problem": Who will grow food when the current generation of aging small farmers and peasants disappears? A combination of objective and subjective factors effectively discourages young people from assuming the continuity of peasant and family farming, especially in countries that have experienced significant neoliberal dismantling of rural infrastructure and education. Rural social movements are increasingly building educational processes linked with small-scale, ecological farming in the hopes of reinforcing the development of identities and skills for peasant futures and cadre in the struggle for popular land reform, agroecology, and food sovereignty.

Across the globe, the countryside faces the "generation problem": Who will grow food when the cur... more Across the globe, the countryside faces the "generation problem": Who will grow food when the current generation of aging small farmers and peasants disappears? A combination of objective and subjective factors effectively discourages young people from assuming the continuity of peasant and family farming, especially in countries that have experienced significant neoliberal dismantling of rural infrastructure and education. Rural social movements are increasingly building educational processes linked with small-scale, ecological farming in the hopes of reinforcing the development of identities and skills for peasant futures and cadre in the struggle for popular land reform, agroecology, and food sovereignty.

The Spanish word formación can be translated as 'training' or 'education', but Latin American soc... more The Spanish word formación can be translated as 'training' or 'education', but Latin American social movements use it as inspired by Che Guevara's notion of 'molding' the values of the new woman and new man for egalitarian, cooperative social relations in the construction of a 'new society'. This contribution presents findings on the dialectical linkages between the formación processes led by the Rural Workers' Association (ATC) and the gradual transformation of the Nicaraguan countryside by peasant families choosing to grow food using agroecological practices. We use Vygotsky's sociocultural historical theory to explore the developmental processes of formación subjects and the pedagogical mediators of their transformation into movement cadre. The motivations of active learners to develop new senses and collective understandings about their material reality become a counterhegemonic process of internalization and socialization of agroecological knowledges and senses. In this paper, we further explore the formación process by identifying territorial mediators: culturally significant elements within and outside of individuals that facilitate the rooting of agroecological social processes in a given territory where the social movement is active. By placing the territory, rather than the individual, at the center of popular education processes, new synergies are emerging in the construction of socially mobilizing methods for producing and spreading agroecological knowledge.

Encyclopedia of Politics of the American West, 2013

Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 08039410 2012 666215, Apr 19, 2012

La Pensée

Nature reserves are a commonly-used policy for biodiversity conservation in Latin America, but en... more Nature reserves are a commonly-used policy for biodiversity conservation in Latin America, but environmental laws can run contrary to customs and practices of resource-dependent communities. This paper examines conflicting frameworks of resource management and governance in an agricultural community's efforts to comply with federal policies against land burns in a nature reserve of Chiapas, Mexico. In the community of California, resource management is a key locus where local governance structures come into conflict with hierarchical state power in Mexico. Participatory workshops and semi-structured interviews were primary research instruments for discovery of community perspectives on the nature reserve, land use, and local governance. In areas where state-led conservation efforts limit land use, resource-dependent communities defend their access rights, while they also determine how to collectively and sustainably manage their own

Forum for Development Studies, 2012

Area, 2012

... Food security and global environmental change – Edited by John Ingram, Polly Ericksen and Dia... more ... Food security and global environmental change – Edited by John Ingram, Polly Ericksen and Diana Liverman. Beth Bee. Article first published online: 23 JAN 2012. ... More content like this. Find more content: like this article. Find more content written by: Beth Bee. ...