Sovereignty at What Scale? An Inquiry into Multiple Dimensions of Food Sovereignty

Abstract

Food sovereignty has struggled to make inroads into changing the structures and processes underlying the corporate food regime. One reason is that scale is still underspecified in the politics, strategies, and theories of food sovereignty. We suggest that much can be learned from examining the multiple dimensions of scale inherent in ongoing food sovereignty struggles. A gap exists between these in vivo experiments and the maturing academic theory of scale. The concept of ‘sovereignty’ can be opened up to reveal that movements, peoples, and communities, for example, are creating multiple sovereignties and are exercising sovereignty in more relational ways. Relational scale can aid movements and scholars to map and evaluate how spatial and temporal processes at and among various levels work to reinforce dominant agri-food systems but could also be reconfigured to support progressive alternatives. Finally, we apply relational scale to suggest practical strategies for realizing food sovereignty, using examples from the Potato Park in the Peruvian Andes.

Extracto – La soberanía alimentaria se ha esforzado en encontrar caminos de penetración en el cambio delas estructuras y procesos que determinan el régimen alimentario corporativo. Una de las razones es que su alcance aún permanece poco especificado en las políticas, estrategias y teorías de la soberanía alimentaria. Se sugiere que hay mucho que aprender del examen de las múltiples dimensiones de la medida inherente a los actuales esfuerzos por soberanía alimentaria. Existe una brecha entre estos experimentos en-vivo y la madura teoría académica de medición. El concepto de “soberanía” puede abrirse para revelar que los movimientos, gentes y comunidades, por ejemplo, están creando múltiples soberanías y se encuentran ejerciendo soberanía en diversas formas de relación. La medida de estas relaciones puede ser de utilidad para los movimientos y académicos en la diagramación y evaluación de cómo los procesos espaciales y temporales de y dentro diferentes niveles, trabajan para reforzar los sistemas agro-alimentarios dominantes y cómo pueden asimismo ser reconfigurados para respaldar alternativas progresistas. Finalmente, se aplica una medición de relaciones para sugerir estrategias prácticas para alcanzar la soberanía alimentaria, usando ejemplos tomados del “Parque de las Papas” (Potato Park) en los Andes peruanos.

Keywords:

• food sovereignty
• scale
• multiple sovereignties
• relational scale
• networks

Notes

1 Many definitions exist. A commonly cited one is the 2007 Nyleni Declaration definition crafted by diverse social movements, including the transnational peasant movement La Via Campesina (LVC), 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’ (Nyleni, 2007 cited in Wittman et al., 2010).

2 The contours of the corporate food regime are sprawling and complex. Summarizing McMichael's extensive work, Fairbairn (2010) explains that the CFR aims at ‘removal of social and political barriers to free flows of capital in food and agriculture and is institutionalized through international agreements such as the WTO's Agreement on Agriculture.’ For Southern agricultural production, she offers, this regime portends ‘increasing focus on export-driven agriculture, increasing dependence of farmers on transnational agrifood corporations for their means of production, and the ongoing dispossession and displacement of peasant populations and their cultures of provision’.

3 As Robbins (in press) points out, localization as an approach needs to be critically interrogated. Local food systems are not a uniform category and need to be differentiated from each other. They contain tremendous diversity in their com position, cultures, production and consumption practices, justice, and sustainability.

4 By ‘negotiable’, we do not mean that movements and communities are undertaking negotiations or compromising with powerful agri-food actors such as Cargill or FAO to make agreements. We mean that the concept of sovereignty is ‘up for grabs’.

5 It is important to realize that multiple sovereignties are not limited to civil society, government, or community actors: they may feature businesses and financial networks. The nature of multiple sovereignties may neither be benign nor malevolent in itself: much depends on the power relations and politics of specific sovereign actors. Fostering multiple sovereignties alone is not necessarily conducive to greater democracy. Indeed, neoliberal economics and policies have encouraged the selective devolution of state functions to private authority over the past 30 years. The broader philosophical and political context of multiple sovereignties matters greatly.

6 As many activists and scholars have emphasized, food sovereignty movements frequently take a network form, building relations between diverse actors at and between local, regional, and national levels (e.g., Desmarais & Wittman, 2014). This work, however, may not adequately integrate sovereignty over technology, resources, knowledge, distribution, or infrastructure.

Additional information

Alastair Iles is an Associate Professor in Environmental Policy and Societal Change at the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the University of California at Berkeley. He researches green chemistry science and politics, participatory approaches to governing technologies, and policies for diversified farming systems and for food sovereignty. His publications include recent papers in Public Understanding of Science, The Journal of Cleaner Production, Ecology and Society, and Science as Culture.

Maywa Montenegro de Wit is a PhD candidate at the University of California at Berkeley and a former science journalist based in New York City. Her research focuses on seeds, agroecology and food sovereignty, and the politics of access to genetic resources. Among her publications are articles in Ecology and Society, Gastronomica, Seed Magazine, and a co-authored chapter in the book Agrobacterium: From biology to biotechnology.