Translating the Politics of Food Sovereignty: Digging into Contradictions, Uncovering New Dimensions (original) (raw)
The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2016
Research into food sovereigntybroadly defined by transnational social movements as 'the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems' (Nyéléni 2007a)is a dynamically evolving area of academic inquiry. Recent years have seen a bourgeoning of studies focused on theoretical explorations of the concept, on the dynamics within and among movements connected to it, and on real-life attempts to put it into practice. From within these studies is an emerging consensus that food sovereignty, in its multiple dimensions, is best understood and approached as a process (Edelman et al. 2014; Iles and Montenegro de Wit 2015; Shattuck, Schiavoni, and VanGelder 2015). The concept itself is a moving target, a reflection, in part, of the shifting terrain of global agrifood politics (McMichael 2015) and of the new actors who have taken it up (Patel 2009). The peasant movements that originally thrust the concept into public light continue to form a key mobilizing base for food sovereignty, while they
Food Sovereignty:convergence and contradictions, conditions and challenges
This article introduces this special collection on food sovereignty. It frames the collection in relation to a broader political and intellectual initiative that aims to deepen academic discussions on food sovereignty. Building upon previous and parallel initiatives in ‘engaged academic research’ and following the tradition of ‘critical dialogue’ among activists and academics, we have identified four key themes – all focusing on the contradictions, dilemmas and challenges confronting future research – that we believe contribute to further advancing the conversation around food sovereignty: (1) dynamics within and between social groups in rural and urban, global North–South contexts; (2) flex crops and commodities, market insertion and long-distance trade; (3) territorial restructuring, land and food sovereignty; and (4) the localisation problematique. We conclude with a glance at the future research challenges at international, national and local scales, as well as at the links between them, while emphasising the continuing relevance of a critical dialogue between food sovereignty activists and engaged scholars.
Food Sovereignty: A Critical Case
2017
For decades, the global food security strategy has operated on the assumption that poverty and hunger result from a state of underdevelopment, which can be alleviated through the distribution of technology to increase farm-level productivity. In more recent years, transnational corporate involvement within food security has led to a global imposition of intellectual property rights over seed and agriculture science, thus catalyzing a process of accumulation by dispossession. Those who have been dispossessed of their seed, knowledge, food cultures, and social relations of production, however, have not stood idly by. NGO, peasant and human rights organizations have galvanized around food sovereignty, a radical-rights based alternative to the business as usual approach of food security. Broadly defined, food sovereignty is the peoples’ right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It has also been described as ‘repossessing the commons’, or taking back those aspects of life, ...
Introduction: Critical perspectives on food sovereignty
The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2014
Visions of food sovereignty have been extremely important in helping to galvanize broad-based and diverse movements around the need for radical changes in agro-food systems. Yet while food sovereignty has thrived as a 'dynamic process', until recently there has been insufficient attention to many thorny questions, such as its origins, its connection to other food justice movements, its relation to rights discourses, the roles of markets and states and the challenges of implementation. This essay contributes to food sovereignty praxis by pushing the process of critical self-reflection forward and considering its relation to critical agrarian studies - and vice versa.
The hefty challenges of food sovereignty's adulthood— Synthesis paper
The three articles in this section reflect a broader shift that is taking place in the debate on food sovereignty. After almost two decades since its inception, the term—which is also a " counter-narrative " , a " mobilizing tactic " , and a " political agenda " (Desmarais, this issue)—has gained significant leverage as an alternative paradigm to industrial agriculture. A sign of the term's maturity may be the growing consensus shared by critical food studies scholars and activists about its potential as an alternative paradigm. At the same time, food sovereignty's adulthood is rife with complex challenges. At stake is no less than turning a dream born in the margins into a concrete, viable reality for the global agrifood system. This article focuses on three challenges faced by the food sovereignty movement today: (1) operating across multiple scales; (2) maintaining internal democratic practices as the movement continues to grow and become more complex; and (3) building cross-sectoral alliances to foster broader social change. Operating across multiple scales As Desmarais points out (this issue), one of the key features of the Global Food Sovereignty Movement is that it recognizes the particular histories and geographies of the struggles that are part of it while at the same time providing a common ground and shared vision. Such a vision— summed up by the three principles indicated by Wittman (this issue) of ecological sustainability, distributive justice and procedural justice—ultimately seeks to change the asymmetrical power