2014/01/22 by Philip McMichael · 3 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · #Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development #Organic Food and Agriculture #Urban Agriculture and Sustainability
paper · doi:10.1080/03066150.2013.876999
openalex publication_date 2014/01/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
To historicize food sovereignty is not simply to recognize its multiple forms and circumstances across time and space, but also to recognize its relation to the politics of capital in a crisis conjuncture. This paper traces the evolution of the food sovereignty vision from the initial stages of the food sovereignty countermovement to the present, arguing that food sovereignty politics have not only traveled from countryside to city as consumers/citizens anticipate ecological constraints and compensate for unequal food distributions, but also they have been confronted with transitions in the food regime following the recent food crisis. New enclosures, in the forms of land grabs and value-chains, administered by public-private ‘governance’ partnerships, have contradictory effects: threatening the peasant base of the food sovereignty countermovement, but also threatening to exacerbate the food crisis, as evidenced in recent food riot politics animated by the food sovereignty vision. As the food regime restructures, it reconditions the possibilities of food sovereignty politics. Arguably, the ultimate historicization of food sovereignty possibility is immanent in cumulative energy and climate feedbacks.