Food Sovereignty : Convergence and Contradictions, Condition and Challenges

Building upon previous and parallel initiatives in scholar-activism and along the tradition of ‘a critical dialogue’ among activists and academics, this book identifies four key themes that focus on the difficult contradictions, dilemmas and challenges confronting future research in the area of food sovereignty: (i) dynamics within and between social groups and classes, (ii) flex crops and commodities, market insertion and long-distance trade, (iii) territorial restructuring, land and food sovereignty, and (iv) localization problematique. It aims to deepen academic discussions on food sovereignty. This book was originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

A fundamentally contested concept, food sovereignty (FS) has – as a political project and campaign, an alternative, a social movement and an analytical framework – barged into global discourses, both political and academic, over the past two decades. This collection identifies a number of key questions regarding FS. What does (re)localisation mean? How does the notion of FS connect with similar and/or overlapping ideas historically? How does it address questions of both market and non-market forces in a dominantly capitalist world? How does FS deal with such differentiating social contradictions? How does the movement deal with larger issues of nation-state, where a largely urbanised world of non-food producing consumers harbours interests distinct from those of farmers? How does FS address the current trends of crop booms, as well as other alternatives that do not sit comfortably within the basic tenets of FS, such as corporate-captured fair trade? How does FS grapple with the land question and move beyond the narrow ‘rural/agricultural’ framework? Such questions call for a new era of research into FS, a movement and theme that in recent years has inspired and mobilised tens of thousands of activists and academics around the world: young and old, men and women, rural and urban. This book was originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.