‘Understanding the World in Order to Change It’: What Might Food Sovereignty Look Like? Or, a Normative Political Ecology as Livelihood Sovereignty

2017 ◽  
pp. 315-350
Author(s):  
Mark Tilzey
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
The World

scholarly journals POWER-KNOWLEDGE RELATIONS IN THE FIELD OF POLITICAL ECOLOGY

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
ENRIQUE LEFF
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The State ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
The World ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Open Dialogue

Abstract The current environmental crisis calls for thinking about the state of the world: the thermodynamic-ecological and symbolic-cultural conditions of organic and human life on the planet. In this regard, it stresses the need to realize the unawareness and life’s unsustainability that humanity has created. In this text I discuss and take a stand about some of the concepts and founding and constitutive research lines of political ecology. In this way I pretend to open dialogue by placing in context some of the principles, ideas, and founding viewpoints of political ecology in Latin America and contrasting them with those from the English-speaking school of thought. I intend not only to establish a political socio-geography, but to question the epistemic core of political ecology, and to stimulate a more cosmopolitan critical thinking in order to be able to face the hegemonic powers that lead the world into social and environmental decay

scholarly journals Between activism and science: grassroots concepts for sustainability coined by Environmental Justice Organizations

2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Martinez-Alier ◽  
Isabelle Anguelovski ◽  
Patrick Bond ◽  
Daniela Del Bene ◽  
Federico Demaria ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Corporate Accountability ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Environmental Racism ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Academic Scholarship ◽  
Water Justice

In their own battles and strategy meetings since the early 1980s, EJOs (environmental justice organizations) and their networks have introduced several concepts to political ecology that have also been taken up by academics and policy makers. In this paper, we explain the contexts in which such notions have arisen, providing definitions of a wide array of concepts and slogans related to environmental inequities and sustainability, and explore the connections and relations between them. These concepts include: environmental justice, ecological debt, popular epidemiology, environmental racism, climate justice, environmentalism of the poor, water justice, biopiracy, food sovereignty, "green deserts", "peasant agriculture cools downs the Earth", land grabbing, Ogonization and Yasunization, resource caps, corporate accountability, ecocide, and indigenous territorial rights, among others. We examine how activists have coined these notions and built demands around them, and how academic research has in turn further applied them and supplied other related concepts, working in a mutually reinforcing way with EJOs. We argue that these processes and dynamics build an activist-led and co-produced social sustainability science, furthering both academic scholarship and activism on environmental justice.Keywords: Political ecology, environmental justice organizations, environmentalism of the poor, ecological debt, activist knowledge

Landscapes of Drugs and War : Intersections of Political Ecology and Global Conflict

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael K. Steinberg ◽  
Kent Mathewson
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Trade Networks ◽  
East Indies ◽  
The World ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Moment ◽  
North And South ◽  
Past Half

The maxim of the moment and for the new millennium (at least for now) is that “after 9/11 the world changed.” Focused, amplified, and projected by the media, the September 2001 events have echoed with an apparent immensity and a rending of the global geopolitical fabric that merit comparison with Waterloo in June 1815 and Sarajevo in June 1914. In each case, an epoch is said to have ended, the first by conventional battle in concert with peace conventions that ended several decades of global conflict, the latter two with acts of terrorism that precipitated global wars of vastly differing intensities and probable durations. Each of these turning points in global history has, of course, its own character, dynamics, and contexts, which largely transcend the narrower episodes and scenes that constitute the intersections of drugs, war, and peace. Nevertheless, one of the persistent and little-noticed elements in the history and geography of warfare during the past half millennium has been the role played by psychoactive substances. With the exception of the Sino-British Opium Wars (1830s–1840s), drugs as aids or obstacles, let alone causal factors, of war have been largely overlooked. Yet even a cursory overview, as presented here, should establish the contours of a topic that merits in-depth attention. Here we have only the space to point to some key instances and promising case studies. Future researchers may find these useful points of departure. The three pivotal events noted earlier, plus October 1492 as the antecedent and fourth key moment, mark a fivefold periodization that provides a convenient way of framing the differing historical relations between drugs and warfare. Prior to Europe’s transatlantic expansion and the coeval eruption of capitalism across the globe, the varying articulations between drugs and war were largely local, individual, and particular. With the rise of long-distance trade networks structured by mercantile capitalism, prime commodities such as sugar and tropical spices launched European-based empires and provoked wars from the East Indies to the West Indies, as well as points north and south.

Global Environmental Justice and the Environmentalism of the Poor

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Martinez-Alier
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Resource Extraction ◽  
Tree Plantations ◽  
Ecological Distribution ◽  
Environmental Racism ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
The World ◽  
Water Justice

There are an increasing number of ecological distribution conflicts around the world ultimately caused from the increase in the metabolism of the economy in terms of flows of energy and materials. There are resource extraction conflicts, transport conflicts, and also waste disposal conflicts. Therefore, there are many local complaints. Since the 1980s and 1990s there has been a globalizing environmental justice movement that in its strategy meetings and practices has developed a set of concepts and slogans to describe and intervene in such conflicts. They include “environmental racism,” “popular epidemiology,” “the environmentalism of the poor and the indigenous,” “biopiracy,” “tree plantations are not forests,” “the ecological debt,” “climate justice,” “food sovereignty,” “water justice,” and so on . . . These notions have been born from socio-environmental activism but sometimes they have been taken up also by academic political ecologists and used in their analyses.

The Securitisation of Food Security in Colombia, 1970–2010

2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 641-668 ◽  
Author(s):  
ENZO NUSSIO ◽  
CORINNE A. PERNET
Keyword(s):  
Land Reform ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Food Policy ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Free Market ◽  
World Food ◽  
Food Crisis ◽  
National Priority ◽  
The World ◽  
The Government

AbstractAfter the world food crisis of the early 1970s, food policies became a ‘national priority’ for Colombian development. Colombia was the first country to implement the multi-sectoral approach proposed by international organisations. However, in the past 30 years Colombian governments have presented nutrition as a minor health issue. During the recent world food crisis, the government insisted that Colombia was one of the most food-secure countries in the world. In seemingly similar circumstances, why was food policy made a priority in the 1970s and not in the new millennium? We address this question with the help of securitisation theory. We argue that in the 1970s, the government successfully securitised the food issue in the context of a reduction of external food aid and a failed land reform. Recent national governments (as opposed to some local governments) have had little interest in a securitising move since the related food sovereignty discourses threaten their free market policies.

scholarly journals Origins, Benefits and the Political Basis of Agroecology

2020 ◽  
pp. 11-28
Author(s):  
Colin Ray Anderson ◽  
Janneke Bruil ◽  
M. Jahi Chappell ◽  
Csilla Kiss ◽  
Michel Patrick Pimbert
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The Political ◽  
Traditional Practice ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Systems

AbstractIn this chapter, we introduce the origins and history of agroecology, outlining its emergence as a science and its longstanding history as a traditional practice throughout the world. We provide a brief review of the evidence of the benefits of agroecology in relation to productivity, livelihoods, biodiversity, nutrition, climate change and enhancing social relations. We then outline our approach to agroecology which is rooted in the tradition of political ecology that posits power and governance have always been the decisive factors in shaping agricultural and other ‘human’ systems.

scholarly journals "We feed the world": the political ecology of the Corn Belt's driving narrative

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Lukacs Rissing
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Production Systems ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Agricultural System ◽  
World War ◽  
Rhetorical Strategy ◽  
Moral Framework ◽  
The World ◽  
Agricultural Production Systems

Industrial grain production occupies most of Iowa's farmland. Around the edges of corn and soybean monocultures, however, small-scale, diversified farmers establish alternative agricultural operations and sell to local markets. One narrative, "we feed the world", stretches across these two spheres; its roots lie in post-World War II geopolitics, and its contemporary iterations reflect the actions of private agricultural interest groups. As a rhetorical strategy, asserting "we feed the world" invokes neo-Malthusian fears to reposition differences in agricultural production systems within a moral framework where yield primarily determines agricultural legitimacy. This article ethnographically analyzes how this narrative intersects the lives and livelihoods of conventional and alternative farmers alike. Today, the narrative serves three functions: defending industrial agricultural systems against criticisms,justifying the pursuit of ever-higher yields on moral grounds, and gatekeeping agricultural legitimacy. Examining this discursive mechanism yields insight into the diversity of strategies through which actors within the industrial agricultural system reproduce particular land use practices in service of their own interests.

scholarly journals Food sovereignty, Diné ontologies: spiritual and political ecology as tools for self-determination

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-59
Author(s):  
Eugénie Clément Picos
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Navajo Nation ◽  
Tribal Government ◽  
Indigenous Lands ◽  
Actual Movement

This article focuses on the different actors involved in the food sovereignty movement in the Navajo Nation. By first looking at the historical roots of colonization and western dominance over Indigenous lands and their food systems, I try to give some perspective on the actual movement to end colonization and capitalism. Both are seen as linked and are considered obstacles for the self-determination of the Navajos and Indigenous Peoples in general. The different actors involved (farmers, grassroots activists, intellectuals and academics) put forth food sovereignty as a key tool for decolonization. This might include a structural change in their political and economical lives, with interpersonal conflicts and frictions with the tribal government and the federal one. The tensions between the extractive economy, environmentalists and food sovereignty are present in the Navajo nation and impact their communities and the quality of their lives.

scholarly journals Monster plants. The vegetal political ecology of Lacandonia schismatica

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leticia Durand ◽  
Juanita Sundberg
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Plant Species ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
The World

This paper presents a story about a plant – Lacandonia schismatica  – who subverted disciplinary traditions in botany and reconfigured its geopolitical orders of knowledge. To tell this story, we focus on Lacandonia’s plantiness, Lesley Head and colleagues’s (2012) concept to signify each kind of plant’s unique biophysical characteristics, capacities, and potentialities, and through which they co-produce the world. We trace how L. schismatica intervened in, and (re)configured processes of knowledge production, environmental politics, and identity formation in the Lacandon Forest, Chiapas, Mexico, where it was found. Lacandonia’s plantiness came into being through sudden macromutations; this unexpected but viable plant species participated in reviving an old debate in evolutionary biology: macroevolution versus gradualism. We also analyze how Lacandonia’s plantiness compelled shifts in environmental politics in Chiapas and identity formation in Frontera Corozal, the Chol community where L. schismatica was first located. We conclude with a brief reflection on the implications of vegetal ethics for addressing contemporary environmental crises. 

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