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The book is composed of several articles that explore complexity in its most varied aspects. The solution of contemporary problems, whatever they may be, requires a multifaceted vision, far beyond the reductionist perspective. The study of complex systems, however, does not have the capacity to offer ready answers to the challenges of humanity. On the contrary, it points to the increase in uncertainty, the need to control variables, and uncertainty. This does not mean, therefore, that we should simply ignore the social, economic, and political phenomena that are all around us. What this book demonstrates is the importance of knowledge being disseminated, and it is imperative that different sciences exchange ideas, theories, and breakthroughs.
Our global food system is undergoing rapid change. Since the global food crisis of 2007-2008, a range of new issues have come to public attention, such as land grabbing, food prices volatility, agrofuels and climate change. Peasant social movements are trying to respond to these challenges by organizing from the local to the global to demand food sovereignty. As the transnational agrarian movement La Via Campesina celebrates its 20th anniversary, this book takes stock of the movement’s achievements and reflects on challenges for the future. It provides an in-depth analysis of the movement’s vision and strategies, and shows how it has contributed not only to the emergence of an alternativ...
Peasant Politics of the Twenty-First Century illuminates the transnational agrarian movements that are remaking rural society and the world's food and agriculture systems. Marc Edelman explains how peasant movements are staking their claims from farmers' fields to massive protests around the world, shaping heated debates over peasants' rights and the very category of "peasant" within the agrarian organizations and in the United Nations. Edelman chronicles the rise of these movements, their objectives, and their alliances with environmental, human rights, women's, and food justice groups. The book scrutinizes high-profile activists and the forgotten genealogies and policy implications of foundational analytical frameworks like "moral economy," and concepts, such as "food sovereignty" and "civil society." Peasant Politics of the Twenty-First Century charts the struggle of agrarian movements in the face of land grabbing, counter agrarian reform, and a looming climate catastrophe, and celebrates engaged research from Central America to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Ecuador’s “Good Living”: Crises, Discourse, and Law by Gallegos Anda, presents a critical approach towards the concept of Buen Vivir that was included in Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution. Due to its apparent legal novelty, this normative formula received much praise from multiple civil society and academic circles by forging what some argued to be a new development paradigm based on Andean epistemologies. Gallegos Anda theorizes this important phenomenon through an inductive analysis of context and power relations. Through a masterful navigation through epistemological fields, the author offers a critical theory of Buen Vivir that focuses on changing citizenship regimes, a retreating state, politicised ethnic cleavages, discursive democracy and the emergence of an empty signifier. Gallegos-Anda is the first to situate Buen Vivir in a theoretical context grounded in international human rights law.
The essays in this volume address the question: what does it mean to understand the contemporary moment in light of the 1930s? In the aftermath of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and facing a dramatic rise of right wing, authoritarian politics across the globe, the events of the 1930s have acquired a renewed relevance. Contributions from a diverse, interdisciplinary group of scholars address the relationship between these historical moments in various geographical contexts, from Asia-Pacific to Europe to the Americas, while probing an array of thematic questions—the meaning of populism and fascism, the contradictions of constitutional liberalism and “militant democracy,” long cycles and crisis tendencies in capitalism, the gendering and racialization of right wing movements, and the cultural and class politics of emancipatory struggles. Uncovering continuity as well as change and repetition in the midst of transition, Back to the 30s? enriches our ability to use the past to evaluate the challenges, dangers, and promises of the present.
Food sovereignty has been a fundamentally contested concept in global agrarian discourse over the last two decades, as a political project and campaign, an alternative, a social movement, and an analytical framework. It has inspired and mobilized diverse publics: workers, scholars and public intellectuals, farmers and peasant movements, NGOs, and human rights activists in the global North and South. The term ‘food sovereignty’ has become a challenging subject for social science research, and has been interpreted and reinterpreted in a variety of ways. It is broadly defined as the right of peoples to democratically control or determine the shape of their food system, and to produce suffic...
Food Movements Unite! Strategies to transform our food systems The present corporate food regime dominating the planet’s food systems is environmentally destructive, financially volatile and socially unjust. Though the regime’s contributions to the planet’s four-fold food-fuel-finance and climate crises are well documented, the “solutions” advanced by our national and global institutions reinforce the same destructive technological path, the same global market fundamentalism, and the same unregulated consolidation of corporate power in the food system that brought us the crisis in the first place. A dynamic global food movement has risen up in the face of this sustained corporate a...
"A remarkable collection. The chapters provide extremely useful information on a range of social movements generally not well covered in academic work--and the coverage is provided by people who are either activists within the movements themselves or long-time supporters."--Wendy Wolford, University of North Carolina "An original, unique, and excellent collection. The book has great theoretical value and political relevance."--Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Saint Mary's University (Halifax) All across Latin America, rural peoples are organizing in support of broadly distinct but interrelated issues. Food sovereignty, agrarian reform, indigenous and women’s rights, sustainable development, fair t...
This book examines how people felt during the hardest times of the pandemic. Exploring the experience of Syrian refugees, the connection between the pandemic and food, and the consequences of major risks in the network society, it discusses the relationships between emotions, vulnerability, poverty, and power in the pre- and post-COVID-19 contexts. The book considers the diverse faces of the pandemic and its consequences, showing it to be an indicator of the vulnerability of various groups of people, while also detailing how medical protocols, statistics, and scientific rationality have replaced the usual market rationality.