Contextualising food sovereignty: the politics of convergence among movements in the USA

Abstract

As food sovereignty spreads to new realms that dramatically diverge from the agrarian context in which it was originally conceived, this raises new challenges, as well as opportunities, for already complex transnational agrarian movements. In the face of such challenges, calls for convergence have increasingly been put forward as a strategy for building political power. Looking at the US case, we argue that historically rooted resistance efforts for agrarian justice, food justice and immigrant labor justice across the food system are not only drawing inspiration from food sovereignty, but helping to shape what food sovereignty means in the US. By digging into the histories of these resistance efforts, we can better understand the divides that exist as well as the potential for and politics of convergence. The US case thus offers important insights, especially into the roles of race and immigration in the politics of convergence that might strengthen the global movement for food sovereignty as it expands to new contexts and seeks to engage with new constituencies.

Food justice: cultivating the field

“…The concept of 'food justice' overlaps with related goals of 'food security' and 'food sovereignty,' all of which are understood differently in the US and internationally. These distinctions have been thoroughly parsed in earlier scholarship (Mares and Alkon 2011, Heynen et al 2012, Jarosz 2014, Brent et al 2015, Trauger 2015, Carney 2016, Clendenning et al 2016. away from the study of labor issues (such as the prevalence of low-wage and hazardous jobs in the food system, the labor challenges involved in scaling up alternative food production, and the nature of occupational roles in food justice movements).…”

People, power, change: three pillars of a food sovereignty research praxis

“…Over the last two decades, the food sovereignty project has been adopted well beyond its initial constituency, providing a rallying point for diverse actors across the globe with shared goals for food system transformation (Levkoe 2014;Alonso-Fradejas et al 2015;Brent, Schiavoni, and Alonso-Fradejas 2015;McMichael 2015). Food sovereignty activism has manifested in diverse ways, from dispossessed peoples occupying land in Brazil (Wolford 2010), to multi-sectoral social movements convening across sector, scale and place in Canada (Levkoe 2015), to small-scale farmers defending the infrastructure of local food systems in the Basque Country (Masioli and Nicholson 2010).…”

Six questions for food justice

“…Although food justice practices generally work through principles and ideals embodied within the broader struggle for social justice, the movement is not homogenous, especially when considering US 2 experiences versus those in the UK (Food Ethics Council 2010;Kneafsey et al, this issue, Moragues-Faus 2017) and other parts of the globe (Besky 2015;Blake, this issue). The tensions and contestations reflecting the range of reformist to radical approaches, practices and rationalities (Brent, Schiavoni et al 2015) were, and are, exemplified in our workshop and this special issue.…”

“…For example, Loo (2014) argues that how food justice is commonly defined omits recognition of the participatory inequalities in which material and distributive injustices are grounded. Therefore, personal transformations need to be related to broader political, economic, social and cultural change (Brent, Schiavoni et al 2015). These drives need to be firmly situated within current cultural political economies, regulatory structures and relations of power.…”

“…McEntree 2011, Brent, Schiavoni et al 2015, Eaton 2017, Harrison 2017. Nonetheless, the common ground across developed and developing spaces for those marginalised in the modern food system highlights the potential opportunities for international networks and solidarity (Clendenning, Dressler et al 2016).…”