Conceptualising components, conditions and trajectories of food sovereignty’s ‘sovereignty’

Still searching for (food) sovereignty: Why are radical discourses only partially mobilised in the independent Anglo-Caribbean?

“…Applying an analysis of 'sovereignty' in this post-colonial context, therefore, raises questions about the role of political sovereignty itself for broader debates in the literature about the meaning and potential of food sovereignty in different geopolitical contexts. Roman-Alcalá (2016: 1390 usefully distinguishes between what he calls the 'actually existing sovereignty' of the state and food sovereignty's '"aspirational sovereignty", a (changed) configuration of power that will ostensibly help bring FS [food sovereignty] into being'. These changes may vary from place to place due to diversity at the local, national and supranational level.…”

“…This case is instructive for debates about how food sovereignty travels to different contexts as it shows that the actual conditions of political sovereignty, along with their construction over time, play a crucial role in both its invocation and the possibilities for change. These findings feed into debates that trouble the concept, its meaning and potential, and how its significance and deployment depend upon distinctive 'geohistories' (Wittman, Desmarais, and Wiebe 2010;Edelman 2014;Jarosz, 2014); the role of food sovereignty's sovereignty, the liberal sovereign state, and possibilities for democratic choice (Agarwal, 2014;Trauger 2014;Roman-Alcalá 2016); and the role the state and agrarian movements vis-à-vis international trade and selfsufficiency discourses (Burnett and Murphy, 2014;Clapp, 2017). These questions are pertinent for the Anglo-Caribbean, a group of nations, which, due to small size and structural constraints have historically had little power vis-à-vis the global economy.…”

The hidden edifice of (food) sovereignty: Rights, territory, and the struggle for agrarian reform in Venezuela

“…(Patel, 2009, p. 668).It is only now that FS scholars have begun to put the sovereignty question squarely in the cross hairs. Echoing debates in the critical anthropology tradition (Das & Poole, ; Krupa, ; Krupa & Nugent, ; Monsutti, ; Ong, ), recent FS scholarship converges on the premise that “sovereignty” is more fluid, fragmented, and inherently contested than is often thought (Iles & de Wit Montenegro, ; Roman–Alcalá, ; Schiavoni, , ; Trauger, ). However, beyond this common grounding, each author exhibits a significantly multidimensional and heterogeneous framework for defining sovereignty.…”

“…With Iles and Montenegro de Wit, sovereignty consists of: (a) The capacity to act authoritatively; (b) the ability to influence political and economic processes; and (3) the rights to participate and to be consulted (, p. 485). For Roman‐Alcalá, sovereignty is found at various scales, with the “local” through “relations within civil society”: households, villages, and communities; the “national” with “state governments”: administrations, agencies, and legislative bodies; and the “supranational”: such as the FAO's Committee on Food Sovereignty, Transnational Corporations, “state‐based” free trade agreements, and La Vía Campesina (, p. 1391). Schiavoni, meanwhile, speaks of different “scales” namely, models of production (large, small); “geography,” understood through urban‐rural distinctions; and “institutions,” as both formal and informal modes of political organisation (, pp.…”