Translating the Politics of Food Sovereignty: Digging into Contradictions, Uncovering New Dimensions

Abstract

Food sovereignty, as a movement and a set of ideas, is coming of age. Rooted in resistance to free trade and the globalizing force of neoliberalism, the concept has inspired collective action across the world. We examine what has changed since food sovereignty first emerged on the international scene and reflect on insight from new terrain where the movement has expanded. We argue that to advance the theory and practice of food sovereignty, new frameworks and analytical methods are needed to move beyond binaries—between urban and rural, gender equality and the family farm, trade and localism, and autonomy and engagement with the state. A research agenda in food sovereignty must not shy away from the rising contradictions in and challenges to the movement. The places of seeming contradiction may in fact be where the greatest insights are to be found. We suggest that by taking a relational perspective, scholars can begin to draw insight into the challenges and sticking points of food sovereignty by training their lens on shifts in the global food regime, on the efforts to construct sovereignty at multiple scales, and on the points of translation where food sovereignty is articulated through historical memory, identity, and everyday life.

Extracto – La soberanía alimentaria, como movimiento y conjunto de ideas, está llegando a su mayoría de edad. Enraizada en la resistencia al libre comercio y la fuerza globalizadora del neo-liberalismo, el concepto ha inspirado una acción colectiva en todo el mundo. Examinamos qué ha cambiado desde que la soberanía alimentaria hizo su primera aparición en la escena internacional y reflexionamos en la percepción del nuevo territorio donde el concepto se ha expandido. Argumentamos que, para progresar en términos de la teoría y la práctica de la soberanía alimentaria, son necesarios nuevos marcos y métodos analíticos para ir más allá de lo binario – entre urbano y rural, igualdad de géneros y la finca familiar, comercio y localización y la autonomía y el compromiso con el estado. Una agenda de investigación sobre la soberanía alimentaria debe no ser tímida ante las nacientes contradicciones y desafíos al movimiento. Las posiciones de aparente contradicción pueden de hecho constituir los lugares donde se pueden encontrar los mayores entendimientos. Sugerimos que adoptando la perspectiva de las relaciones, los académicos e intelectuales pueden comenzar a obtener resultados de los desafíos y puntos difíciles de la soberanía alimentaria, entrenando sus lentes en los cambios del régimen alimentario global, en los esfuerzos para construir soberanía en múltiples niveles y en los puntos de transformación donde la soberanía alimentaria es articulada con base en la memoria histórica, identidad y la vida del día a día.

Keywords:

• food sovereignty
• multiple sovereignties
• relational scale
• translation
• agrarian change
• food systems

Acknowledgements

We are deeply grateful for the wisdom and guidance of Jun Borras in assembling and framing this special issue; for James Scott and Kalyanakrishnan (Shivi) Sivaramakrishnan at the Yale Program in Agrarian Studies for hosting Food Sovereignty: A Critical Dialog at Yale in 2014; and to Jun Borras and colleagues for hosting the dialog at ISS in January 2014. Eric Holt-Giménez, Barry Gills, Maywa Montenegro, and Devon Sampson all gave excellent feedback. All errors are of course the authors’.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 This quote by Nicholson is from a talk given at Food Sovereignty: A Critical Dialogue, held 14–15 September 2013 at Yale University (for further details, see http://www.yale.edu/agrarianstudies/foodsovereignty/).

2 Food sovereignty was popularized by the international peasants’ movement La Via Campesina in 1996. For a more extensive definition and framing of food sovereignty, see the Declaration and the Synthesis Report of the Nyéléni (2007) Forum for Food Sovereignty, from which the above definition of food sovereignty has been excerpted (www.nyeleni.org). While a profusion of definitions and frameworks for food sovereignty exists, the authors recognize these documents from the Nyéléni Forum as being the outcome of an important process of articulation and consensus-building among major social movements involved food sovereignty globally. For further background on food sovereignty and the context from which it was born, see Edelman (2014), Martinez-Torres and Rosset (2010), Wittman, Desmarais, and Wiebe (2010), and Patel (2009).

3 These important and persistent tensions and debates in agrarian studies are addressed in greater detail by our colleagues in the introductions to two other special issues on food sovereignty, Critical Perspectives on Food Sovereignty (Volume 41, Issue 6 of The Journal of Peasant Studies), and a forthcoming special issue of Third World Quarterly.

4 Along with this issue, two other special issues showcase highlights of the more than 90 papers discussed at these two meetings: a special issue of The Journal of Peasant Studies (41:6) released in 2014, and a special issue of Third World Quarterly (36:3) released in 2015.

5 Eight companies now account for over half of global sales of agricultural inputs (Fuglie et al., 2011).

6 For an excellent discussion of current issues in studies of agrarian change, see Fairbairn et al. (2014).

7 Investment funds and asset managers are increasingly interested in global agricultural markets and arable land. Though initially largely characterized as Northern sovereign states ‘grabbing’ land from Southern nations, evidence suggests that these large-scale land acquisitions frequently also run South–South, often involving webs of local elites, domestic and transnational corporations, state agencies, and sovereign wealth funds (Margulis, McKeon and Borras, 2013; McMichael, 2015).

8 Available at: http://www.nyeleni.org/DOWNLOADS/newsletters/Nyeleni_Newsletter_Num_13_EN.pdf

Additional information

Annie Shattuck is a Ph.D. candidate in Geography at the University of California Berkeley and a Research Fellow at Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy. Her work examines political ecology and agrarian change.

Christina M. Schiavoni is a Ph.D. candidate at the International Institute for Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague focused on food sovereignty and the right to food. Her background is in food movement organizing in the USA and globally.

Zoe VanGelder is a researcher and a Yale Fox Fellow currently based in Mexico City. Her research explores the ways gender and knowledge politics affect rural livelihoods.