1st Edition
The Politics of Food Sovereignty Concept, Practice and Social Movements
Food sovereignty has been a fundamentally contested concept in global agrarian discourse over the last two decades, as a political project and campaign, an alternative, a social movement, and an analytical framework. It has inspired and mobilized diverse publics: workers, scholars and public intellectuals, farmers and peasant movements, NGOs, and human rights activists in the global North and South. The term ‘food sovereignty’ has become a challenging subject for social science research, and has been interpreted and reinterpreted in a variety of ways. It is broadly defined as the right of peoples to democratically control or determine the shape of their food system, and to produce sufficient and healthy food in culturally appropriate and ecologically sustainable ways in and near their territory.
However, various theoretical issues remain: sovereignty at what scale and for whom? How are sovereignties contested? What is the relationship between food sovereignty and human rights frameworks? What might food sovereignty mean extended to a broader set of social relations in urban contexts? How do the principles of food sovereignty interact with local histories and contexts? This comprehensive volume examines what food sovereignty might mean, how it might be variously construed, and what policies it implies.
This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Globalizations.
1. Translating the Politics of Food Sovereignty: Digging into Contradictions, Uncovering New Dimensions Annie Shattuck, Christina M. Schiavoni and Zoe VanGelder
2. The Land Question in the Food Sovereignty Project Philip McMichael
3. Food Sovereignty and the Recognition of New Rights for Peasants at the UN: A Critical Overview of La Via Campesina’s Rights Claims over the Last 20 Years Priscilla Claeys
4. Competing Sovereignties, Contested Processes: Insights from the Venezuelan Food Sovereignty Experiment Christina M. Schiavoni
5. Sovereignty at What Scale? An Inquiry into Multiple Dimensions of Food Sovereignty Alastair Iles and Maywa Montenegro de Wit
6. Food Sovereignty in Everyday Life: Toward a People-centered Approach to Food Systems Meleiza Figueroa
7. ‘Quiet Food Sovereignty’ as Food Sovereignty without a Movement? Insights from Post-socialist Russia Oane Visser, Natalia Mamonova, Max Spoor and Alexander Nikulin
8. Return to Freedom: Anti-GMO Aloha ‘Āina Activism on Molokai as an Expression of Place-based Food Sovereignty Clare Gupta
9. Broadening the Land Question in Food Sovereignty to Northern Settings: A Case Study of Occupy the Farm Antonio Roman-Alcalá
10. A Recipe for Change: Reclamation of Indigenous Food Sovereignty in O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation for Decolonization, Resource Sharing, and Cultural Restoration Asfia Gulrukh Kamal, Rene Linklater, Shirley Thompson, Joseph Dipple and Ithinto Mechisowin Committee
Biography
Annie Shattuck is a PhD candidate in Geography at the University of California, Berkeley, USA.
Christina Schiavoni is a PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, in the Netherlands.
Zoe VanGelder is a Researcher and a Yale Fox Fellow currently based in Mexico City, Mexico.
