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

ABSTRACT

This article is situated within nascent debates on the role of academics within food sovereignty movements. Drawing on insights from a collective autoethnography, we report on our experiences conducting three food sovereignty research projects in different contexts and at different scales. We suggest that that the principles and practices of food sovereignty translate into a food sovereignty research praxis. This consists of three pillars focusing on people (humanizing research relationships), power (equalizing power relations) and change (pursuing transformative orientations). This article discusses these pillars and analyzes the extent to which we were able to embody them within our projects.     

Mobility in pastoral societies of Northern Mali: Perspectives on social and political rationales

Since the 1980s, the so-called “nomadic” populations in the regions of Northern Mali and Niger have embarked on an extensive process of settlement. Today they mostly live in villages or “settlement sites”. But, at the same time, individuals and small groups among these same populations have considerably enlarged their area of mobility and accelerated the rate and the value of the trade in which they engage. These two phenomena could, at first sight, appear contradictory. But the observation of empirical situations shows, rather, compatibilities, similarities even, between these two concomitant phenomena. Building on innovative debates conducted in geography and sociology, this article puts forward the hypothesis that the building of villages, as well as integration into military bases and barracks, proceeds from (social) rationales of mobility, just as much as transhumance, journeys, migration. Much more than a simple displacement in space, the notion of mobility could describe an “art of doing”, a way of being to others and to the world.     

Trading in development: norms and institutions in the making/unmaking of European Union–African,Caribbean and Pacific trade and development cooperation

This paper offers a contribution to recent debates on European Union (EU) external trade and development policy, with a specific focus on the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries. The question asked is why the EU encountered such difficulties in the attempt to translate its normative preferences for freer trade and closer economic integration into a series of binding agreements? Drawing on both economic constructivist and historical institutionalist insights, it is argued that the case for reform initially rested on a strong convergence between institutions and ideas, enabling the EU to discursively present desired policy reforms as necessary to satisfy World Trade Organisation trade rules. However, in due course, the institutional dynamics behind the latter began to diverge from the EU's policy preferences and blunt its norm-based argument – thus creating the space for transnational coalitions to, first, question and, ultimately, undermine aspects the EU's trade and development prospectus for the ACP.     

The ox fall down: path-breaking and technology treadmills in Indian cotton agriculture

ABSTRACT

Although India’s cotton sector has been penetrated by various input- and capital-intensive methods, penetration by herbicide has been largely stymied. In Telangana State, the main obstacle has been the practice of ‘double-lining’, in which cotton plants are spaced widely to allow weeding by ox-plow. Path dependency theory primarily explains the persistence of sub-optimal practices, but double-lining is an example of an advantageous path for cash-poor farmers. However, it is being actively undermined by parties intent on expanding herbicide markets and opening a niche for next-generation genetically modified cotton. We use the case to explicate the role of treadmills in technology ‘lock-in’. We also examine how an adaptive locked-in path may be broken by external interests, drawing on recent analyses of ‘didactic’ learning by farmers.     

The debate on food sovereignty theory: agrarian capitalism,dispossession and agroecology

This contribution reviews recent critiques of the food sovereignty framework. In particular it engages with the debate between Henry Bernstein and Philip McMichael and analyzes their different conceptualizations of agrarian capitalism. It critically identifies tendencies in food sovereignty approaches to assume a food regime crisis, to one-sidedly emphasize accumulation by dispossession and enclosure and thereby to overlook the importance of expanded reproduction, and to espouse a romantic optimism about farmer-driven agroecological knowledge which is devoid of modern science. Alternatives to current modernization trajectories cannot simply return to the peasant past and to the local. Instead, they need to recognize the desires of farmers to be incorporated into larger commodity networks, the importance of industrialization and complex chains for feeding the world population, and the support of state and science, as well as social movements, for realizing a food sovereign alternative.     

Towards food sovereignty: interrogating peasant voice in the United Nations Committee on World Food Security

The goal of the direct participation of food producer constituencies – and other citizens – is a key component of food sovereignty, the policy framework first launched by La Vía Campesina and engendering the much wider food sovereignty movement. In this paper, I outline the reasons why the reform of the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS) can be regarded as historically significant to this goal. Focusing upon the CFS's aspirations for inclusivity, I outline a framework for interrogating the experiences of social movement activists representing food producer constituencies seeking to convert their formal right to participate in the CFS into substantive participation. Going beyond the capturing of their experiences, the framework also reveals the different ways in which their challenges in attaining substantive participation can be overcome, with a particular emphasis upon adjustments within the arena itself. The paper concludes with an overview of the research agenda suggested by Raj Patel (2009), amongst others, and alluded to further in the content of this paper.     

浅论农民工劳动就业权的实现

就业权是劳动者赖以生存的基本权利,是实现劳动权的基础。农民工应该与城市居民一样享有平等的就业权,但事实上农民工没有资格成为城镇国有企事业和行政单位的正式职工,许多城市在劳动就业方面对农民工设置了许多制度性门槛,城市农民工有限的劳动就业权亦受到诸多侵害。应从实现平等机会权、同工同酬权、工资支付保障权等几个方面着手实现农民工劳动就业权。     

走入文本 走出文本——我对“与文本对话”的理解

《语文课程标准》指出:"阅读教学是学生、教师、文本之间对话的过程"。这要求老师在教学时要改变自己的角色,要从以前追求的"正式性、权力性、官僚性、僵化性等传统价值观念"中走出来,自觉形成"非正式性、平等性、灵活性、适应性、创造性"的价值观念。激发学生的求知欲望,为完成"文本对话"给学生创设良好的情境,使学生在宽松、具有亲和力的氛围中走入文本,再走出文本,从而获取完全属于自己的知识。     

知识经济时代图书馆面临的机遇、挑战及发展战略

图书馆是伴随着社会对知识的需求产生和发展起来的,当社会经济进一步发展,人类社会进 入知识经济时代,知识对社会的进步将发挥前所未有的重要作用,也使图书馆面临全新的机遇和挑战。 图书馆应制定新的发展战略,以适应知识经济的挑战。     

知识经济背景下国际产业转移研究新趋势

新的国际背景下,传统产业转移理论对国际产业转移的新趋势的解释力逐渐失去了效力,迫切需要有新的突破和发展。文章从弗农产品生命周期理论、比较优势理论、雁行模式理论、产业梯度转移理论、国际分工理论、内部化理论、西方中心论、可持续发展理论等方面分析了国际产业转移发展的新问题,并提出了国际产业转移发展的新动向,认为国际产业转移理论正向东道国、知识因素、产业链、产业风险、跨国公司等方面的互动理论方向发展。