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Food sovereignty: the debate, the deadlock, and a suggested detour

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  • Otto Hospes

Abstract

Whereas hundreds of social movements and NGOs all over the world have embraced the concept of food sovereignty, not many public authorities at the national and international level have adopted the food sovereignty paradigm as a normative basis for alternative agriculture and food policy. A common explanation of the limited role of food sovereignty in food and agriculture policy is that existing power structures are biased towards maintaining the corporatist food regime and neo-liberal thinking about food security. This article sets out to provide an alternative explanation for this limited role by critically reflecting on the debate about food sovereignty itself. The main argument is that this debate is characterized by deadlock. Two mechanisms underlying the deadlock are analyzed: confusion about the concept of sovereignty and the failure of the epistemic community to debate how to reconcile conflicting values, discourses, and institutions regarding food. To overcome this deadlock and organize meaningful debate with public authorities, it is proposed that the food sovereignty movement uses insights from legal pluralism and debates on governance and adopts the ending of “food violence” as a new objective and common frame. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

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  • Otto Hospes, 2014. "Food sovereignty: the debate, the deadlock, and a suggested detour," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 31(1), pages 119-130, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:31:y:2014:i:1:p:119-130
    DOI: 10.1007/s10460-013-9449-3
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    4. Adanella Rossi & Mario Coscarello & Davide Biolghini, 2021. "(Re)Commoning Food and Food Systems. The Contribution of Social Innovation from Solidarity Economy," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-30, June.
    5. Rebecka Daye, 2020. "Competing food sovereignties: GMO-free activism, democracy and state preemptive laws in Southern Oregon," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 37(4), pages 1013-1025, December.
    6. Koen Dekeyser & Lise Korsten & Lorenzo Fioramonti, 2018. "Food sovereignty: shifting debates on democratic food governance," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 10(1), pages 223-233, February.
    7. Efe Can Gürcan, 2018. "Theorizing Food Sovereignty from a Class-Analytical Lens: The Case of Agrarian Mobilization in Argentina," Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, Centre for Agrarian Research and Education for South, vol. 7(3), pages 320-350, December.
    8. Robin Siebert & Christian Herzig & Marc Birringer, 2022. "Strategic framing of genome editing in agriculture: an analysis of the debate in Germany in the run-up to the European Court of Justice ruling," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 39(2), pages 617-632, June.

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