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ABSTRACT
In ongoing contests over neoliberal globalization, feminists are increasingly forging alliances with non-feminist others around common struggles, both locally and transnationally. This is indicative of a broader shift in transnational feminist politics from intra-movement to inter-movement alliances, and maps onto a historic transition from the UN era (roughly 1985–1995) to the global justice era (roughly 1995–present). Engagement with new partners on non-traditional issues is shifting the scope and contours of the feminisms in question and raising anew the question of hierarchy in transnational feminist networks and in their coalition politics. This article traces the appropriation of food sovereignty by the World March of Women in the context of its alliance with the transnational peasant movement, Vía Campesina, the development of a feminist politics and discourse of food sovereignty, and enquires into the relationship between these processes and “grassroots” members of the March – the rural, peasant and Indigenous women who are understood to be the primary subjects of a feminist politics of food sovereignty.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Dominique Masson, Pascale Dufour, Elsa Beaulieu Bastien and Anabel Paulos as well as the anonymous reviewers for their valued feedback on earlier versions of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributor
Janet M. Conway is Canada Research Chair in Social Justice at Brock University. She works on the politics of transnational social justice movements under conditions of globalization. She is author of Edges of Global Justice: the World Social Forum and Its “Others” (Routledge 2013) and Identity, Place, Knowledge: Social Movements Contesting Globalization (Fernwood 2004).
Notes
1 For historical studies of Vía Campesina, see Desmarais (Citation2007); Patel (Citation2006); Borras and Franco (Citation2009).
2 For background on Women of Vía Campesina, see Desmarais (Citation2007, 161ff).
3 Key issues here include gender bias in both land reform legislation and customary rights that favor a single male as holder of title and prevent women from holding land via inheritance, in widowhood or after separation. Women likewise cannot access credit or technical assistance independently. With increased corporate land grabbing and privatization, women's subsistence production and access to the commons is further restricted. These conditions force rural women to migrate to cities to search for alternative livelihoods.
4 Women produce 80 percent of food in poor countries; but their knowledges extend beyond food production narrowly conceived to include saving seeds, medicinal plants, animal husbandry and the protection of biodiversity. These knowledge traditions challenge vertical systems of technical support.
5 In designating the March as a TFN, I am following contemporary scholarly usage, e.g., Moghadam (Citation2005). I differentiate between transnational and international elsewhere (see Conway Citation2017).
6 The social relations of marginalization or subalternization are distinct to different contexts, so different axes of difference are more or less salient (Giraud Citation2015, 100). As the substantive focus of this inquiry is the politics of food sovereignty, I focus the question of subaltern agency on rural, peasant and Indigenous women.
7 I use the term “non-feminist others” to designate mixed-gender movements as well as women's organizations that do not identify themselves as feminist. My purpose is to highlight the distinct nature of the feminist politics of inter-movement, as opposed to intra-movement (among feminists), alliances.
8 Antrobus (Citation2004); Jain (Citation2005); West (Citation1999); Desai (Citation2008). For discussion, see Hawkesworth (Citation2006, 130ff).
9 Interview via Skype with Miriam Nobre, November 18, 2013.
10 Personal communication with Elsa Beaulieu Bastien, December 7, 2015.
11 Interview via Skype with Miriam Nobre, November 18, 2013.
12 Translated from Portuguese by Elsa Beaulieu Bastien. This document is a report on the consultations conducted in Brazil by the March to develop its reflection on food sovereignty.
13 See also Agarwal (Citation2014); Razavi (Citation2009); Park, White, and Julia (Citation2015);
14 Interview via Skype with Miriam Nobre, November 18, 2013.
15 See also Brochner (Citation2014); Deere (Citation2003); Deepak (Citation2014); Sachs (Citation2013).
16 Translated from French by author.
17 See Rosset (Citation2013).
18 Translated from Portuguese by Elsa Beaulieu Bastien.