Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-xtgtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T18:34:01.072Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Human rights and collective emancipation: The politics of food sovereignty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 August 2014

ROBIN DUNFORD
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article develops contextually grounded accounts of emancipation in general and notions of collective rights based emancipation in particular by identifying a form of emancipatory politics in which collectives demand rights for themselves. The article develops the idea of collective, rights based emancipation by focusing on the practices of two related social movements, the Landless Workers Movement (MST) and la Via Campesina. The MST and Via Campesina seek to replace existing rights to ‘food security’ with a human right to ‘food sovereignty’. While food security agendas emphasise the role of international governance agencies in providing food on behalf of others, food sovereignty is secured by peasant social movements themselves. Furthermore, practices of active citizenship and democratic organisational structures, built through the grassroots and transnational struggles through which peasants raise their demand for human rights, are vital in enacting rights to food sovereignty. In instances where victims are not entirely silenced and powerless, this combination of a demand for human rights and the development of practices of citizenship that enable people to demand and secure rights for themselves provides a contextually grounded emancipatory alternative to interventionist politics that, however well intentioned, risk reinforcing the dependence of purportedly powerless victims.

Type
Articles
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , April 2015 , pp. 239 - 261
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 ‘Critical Security Studies’ can refer, broadly, to nontraditional approaches to security, or more narrowly, to approaches to security that engage with concepts of emancipation (see Newman, Edward, ‘Critical Human Security Studies’, Review of International Studies, 36:1 (2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My focus here is on narrower, ‘emancipatory’ CSS.

2 Booth, Ken, ‘Security and emancipation’, Review of International Studies, 17:4 (1991), p. 324CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Bellamy, Alex and Williams, Paul, ‘Introduction: Thinking Anew About Peace Operations’, in Bellamy, Alex and Williams, Paul (eds), Peace Operations and the Global Order (London: Routeledge, 2007), pp. 1–15, 7Google Scholar.

4 Wyn-Jones, Richard, Security, Strategy and Critical Theory (London: Lynne Reinner, 1999), p. 300Google Scholar.

5 Hynek, Nik and Chandler, David, ‘No Emancipatory Alternative, No Critical Security Studies’, Critical Studies on Security, 1:1 (2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Chandler, David, ‘The uncritical critique of “liberal peace”’, Review of International Studies, 36: S1 (2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Chandler, David, ‘Resilience and human security: the post-interventionist paradigm’, Security Dialogue, 43:3 (2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Browning, Christopher S. and McDonald, Matt, ‘The Future of Critical Security Studies: Ethics and the Politics of Security’, European Journal of International Relations, 19:2 (2011), p. 237Google Scholar.

7 Blakeley, Ruth, ‘Human Rights, State Wrongs, and Social Change: the Theory and Practice of Emancipation’, Review of International Studies, 39:3 (2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Blakeley, ‘Emancipation’, p. 600.

9 Blakeley, ‘Emancipation’, p. 619.

10 Shepherd, Benjamin, ‘Thinking Critically About Food Security’, Security Dialogue, 43:3 (2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Hynek and Chandler, ‘No Alternative’.

12 Paris, Roland, ‘Saving Liberal Peacebuilding’, Review of International Studies, 36:2 (2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Hynek and Chandler, ‘No Alternative’, p. 56.

14 Wyn-Jones, Security, p. 77.

15 Blakeley, ‘Emancipation’, p. 604.

16 Hynek and Chandler, ‘No Alternative’, p. 56.

17 See also Chandler, ‘Uncritical Critique’; and Chandler, ‘Resilience’.

18 Neufeld, Mark, ‘Pitfalls of Emancipation and Discourses of Security: Reflections on Canada's “Security with a Human Face”’, International Relations, 18:1 (2004), p. 109CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There are similar concerns in development studies, where ‘emancipatory’ concepts of rights based development and local agency have turned into a right to participate in markets, in particular, through microcredit schemes. See Cooke, Bill and Kothari, Uma (eds), Participation: The New Tyranny? (London, Zed Books, 2001)Google Scholar.

19 Browning and McDonald, ‘Future’, p. 237.

20 Ibid., p. 237.

21 Ibid., p. 248.

22 Adorno, Theodor W. and Horkheimer, Max, The Culture Industry (London, Routeledge, 2001)Google Scholar.

23 Jones, Richard Wyn, ‘On Emancipation’, in Booth, Ken (ed.), Critical Security Studies and World Politics (Boulder, Co, Lynne Reinner, 2004), p. 222Google Scholar.

24 Ibid., pp. 228–9.

25 Wyn-Jones, Security, p. 300.

26 Bellamy and Williams, ‘Introduction’, p. 7.

27 Booth, ‘Security and Emancipation’, p. 319, emphasis added.

28 Booth, Theory of World Security, p. 112, emphasis added.

29 Shepherd, ‘Thinking Critically’, p. 207.

30 McDonald, Matt, Security, the Environment and Emancipation (London: Routeledge, 2012), p. 45Google Scholar.

31 Columba Peoples, ‘Security After Emancipation? Critical Theory, Violence and Resistance’, Review of International Studies, 37:3 (date?), p. 1128Google Scholar. See Wyn Jones, Security, p. 161.

32 Neufeld, Pitalls, p. 111.

33 Booth, Critical Security Studies, p. 274.

34 Booth, ‘Security and Emancipation’, p. 326.

35 Dunne, Tim and Wheeler, Nicolas, ‘“We the Peoples”: Contending Discourses of Security in Human Rights Theory and Practice’, International Relations, 18:9 (2004), p. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Ibid., p. 18.

37 Ibid., p. 19.

38 Shepherd, ‘Thinking Critically’, pp. 206–7.

39 Wilson Campos, a Costa Rican activist, cited in Borras, Saturnino Jr, ‘The Politics of Transnational Agrarian Movements’, Development and Change, 41:5 (2010), p. 785CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Browning and McDonald, ‘Future’, p. 237.

41 Ibid.

42 Hynek and Chandler, ‘No Alternative’; Chandler, ‘Uncritical Critique’; and Chandler, ‘Resilience’. Booth (Theory of World Security, p. 324) has tried to distance himself from co-opted human security agendas, indicating that that state-led human security agendas have ‘taken on the image of the velvet glove on the iron hand of state power’. But Booth's ‘loosely liberal set of ethical commitments’, and tentative response to ‘difficult questions such as the legitimacy of the use of force and so-called humanitarian agendas’ render the difference between emancipatory and co-opted human security agendas unclear (Browning and McDonald ‘Future’, p. 247; Peoples, ‘Security’).

43 Hynek and Chandler, ‘No Alternative’, p. 50.

44 Richmond, Oliver P., ‘A Post-Liberal Peace: Eirenism and the Everyday’, Review of International Studies, 35:3 (2009), pp. 568–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Richmond, Oliver P., ‘Resistance and the Post-Liberal Peace’, Millennium, 38:3 (2010), p. 688CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Pugh, Michael, ‘Local Agency and Political Economies of Peacebuilding’, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 11:2 (2011), p. 614CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Pugh, Michael, ‘The Political Economy of Peacebuilding: A Critical Theory Perspective’, International Journal of Peace Studies, 10:2 (2005), p. 24Google Scholar.

48 Richmond, Oliver P., ‘Critical Agency, Resistance and a Post-Colonial Civil Society’, Cooperation and Conflict, 46 (2011), p. 423CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Wyn Jones, ‘Emancipation’, p. 222.

50 Richmond, ‘Critical Agency’, p. 434.

51 Mac Ginty, Roger and Richmond, Oliver P., ‘The Local Turn in Peace Building: A Critical Agenda for Peace’, Third World Quarterly, 35:5 (2013), p. 772Google Scholar.

52 Richmond, Oliver P., ‘Human Security and its Subjects’, International Journal, 68:1 (2012), p. 615Google Scholar.

53 Valorization of ‘local’ voices also fails to differentiate between emancipatory and oppressive local voices. See Bubandt, Nils, ‘Vernacular Security’, Security Dialogue, 36:3 (2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Hynek and Chandler, ‘No Alternative’, p. 50.

55 Paris, ‘Saving Liberal Peacebuilding’, pp. 356–7.

56 Blakeley, ‘Emancipation’, p. 600.

57 Ibid.

58 Booth, Theory of World Security, p. 382.

59 McDonald, Security, p. 4; McDonald, Matt, ‘Emancipation and Critical Terrorism Studies’, European Political Science, 6 (2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 McDonald, Security, p. 9.

61 Andrew Linklater, ‘Political Community and Human Security’, in Booth (ed.), Critical Security Studies, p. 120

62 Wyn Jones, ‘Emancipation’, p. 223.

63 Linklater, ‘Political Community’, p. 120.

64 McDonald, Emancipation, p. 57.

65 McDonald, ‘Terrorism’, p. 256.

66 Van Munster, Rens, ‘Book Reviews’, Cambridge Journal of International Affairs, 21:3 (2008), p .439Google Scholar.

67 Marx, Karl (1844), ‘On the Jewish Question’, in McLellan, D. (ed.), Karl Marx: Selected Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 46–71Google Scholar.

68 Harvey, Companion, p. 49.

69 Harvey, David, A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

70 Ibid., p. 40.

71 Ibid., pp. 43–4.

72 Blakeley, ‘Emancipation’, p. 607.

73 Ibid., pp. 609, 610.

74 Ibid., pp. 604–5, emphasis added.

75 Ibid., p. 609.

76 Ibid., p. 613.

77 Ibid.

78 See The Rendition Project, available at: {http://www.therenditionproject.org.uk/news/index.html} accessed 9 April 2014.

79 Blakeley, ‘Emancipation’, p. 613.

80 Ibid., p. 615.

81 Ibid., p. 619.

82 Whether emancipation requires action on behalf of powerless victims or can come about through the agency of victims does not necessarily map on to whether the rights violated are civil and political or social and economic, or first, second, or third generation. Rights to free speech have often been pursued by collective movements on their own behalf, while victims of natural disasters may be in a circumstance where emergency relief provided by others is required. What makes the difference is not the type of rights violation, but the possibilities for agency among the oppressed. Understanding the possibilities for emancipatory agency, then, cannot be based on an a priori account of what type of rights are violated, but must be based on the particular context in which emancipation is pursued.

83 Richmond, ‘Critical Agency’, p. 143.

84 Browning and McDonald, ‘Future’, p. 237.

85 Paris, ‘Saving Liberal Peacebuilding’, p. 356.

86 Ibid., p. 340.

87 Campos, cited in Borras Jr, ‘Agrarian Movements’, p. 785.

88 Vergara-Camus, Leandro, ‘The MST and the EZLN Struggle for Land: New Forms of Peasant Rebellions’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 9:3 (2009), p. 382CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 Vergara-Camus, Leandro, ‘The Politics of the MST’, Latin American Perspectives, 36:4 (2009), p. 182CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 Rosset, Peter, ‘Food Sovereignty and Alternative Paradigms to Confront Land Grabbing and the Food and Climate Crises’, Development, 54:1 (2011), p. 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91 Ibid.; see also Torrez, Faustino, ‘La Via Campesina: Peasant-Led Agrarian Reform and Food Sovereignty’, Development, 54:1 (2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

92 Demands for a ‘right to food’ have demonstrated more emancipatory potential than notions of ‘food security’. In India, for instance, mobilisation and litigation has seen rights to food enshrined in the enforceable part of the constitution, with a scheme guaranteeing a hot meal to all school children implemented as a result. Focus on Right to Food movements might provide another avenue for providing contextually grounded accounts of emancipation, but I choose to focus on food sovereignty because it explicitly involves victims of dispossession directly transforming the productive sphere in order to demand rights for themselves. As a result, it is best able to militate against tendencies toward elitism and focus on dialogical involvement in CSS. See {http://www.righttofoodindia.org/} accessed 10 April 2014.

93 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), ‘The State of Food Insecurity in the World’ (2010), available at: {http://www.fao.org/docrep/013/il683e.pdf} accessed 8 December 2013, p. 8.

94 Patel, ‘Transgressing Rights’, p. 90.

95 Shepherd, ‘Thinking Critically’, p. 197.

96 Ibid.

97 Holt-Giménez, Eric, ‘From Food Crisis to Food Sovereignty: the Challenge of Social Movements’, Monthly Review, 61:3 (2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

98 Martinez-Torres, Maria Elena and Rosset, Peter, ‘La Via Campesina: the Birth and Evolution of a Transnational Social Movement’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 37:1 (2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

99 Torrez, ‘Via Campesina’, p. 53.

100 Martinez-Torres and Rosset, ‘La Via Campesina’, p. 162. In 2002, the price of US exports lagged 43 per cent below cost of production for wheat, 25 per cent for soybeans, 13 per cent for maize, 61 per cent for cotton, and 35 per cent for rice, making it impossible for peasant farmers to compete (Ibid).

101 Ibid., p. 62.

102 Holt-Gimenez, ‘Food Crisis’, p. 144. See also Torrez, ‘Via Campesina’, p. 53; and Martinez-Torres and Rosset, ‘La Via Campesina’, p. 61.

103 Rosset, ‘Food sovereignty’, pp. 21–2; see also FAO, Food Insecurity.

104 World Bank, ‘Rising Food Prices’ (World Bank: 2008) available at: {http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/LACEXT/EXTLACREGTOPECOPOL/0,,contentMDK:21841733~pagePK:34004173~piPK:34003707~theSitePK:832499,00.html} accessed 8 December 2013.

105 Sternberg, Joel, ‘Chinese Drought, Bread and the Arab Spring’, Applied Geography, 34:519–525 (2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

106 Holt-Gimenez, ‘Food Crisis’, p. 143.

107 Shepherd, ‘Thinking Critically’, p. 205.

108 Ibid., p. 206.

109 Ibid., pp. 206–7.

110 Shepherd, ‘Thinking Critically’, p. 198, moves away from food sovereignty on the basis that ‘the concept is equally open to usurpation by powerful players in the global food regime’. Given that Shepherd's own reframing of food security is, as he acknowledges, also open to co-option, it is unclear why co-option provides a reason to veer away from an analysis of the emancipatory potential of la Via Campesina (p. 207).

111 La Via Campesina, ‘Food Sovereignty: a Future Without Hunger’ (1996), available at: {http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/library/1996%20Declaration%20of%20Food%20Sovereignty.pdf} accessed 2 January 2014.

112 Holt-Gimenez, ‘Food Crisis’, p. 146.

113 La Via Campesina, ‘Future Without Hunger’.

114 Paul Nicholson, interviewed in Wittman, Hannah, ‘Interview: Paul Nicholson, La Via Campesina’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 36:3 (2009)Google Scholar.

115 Vergara Camus, MST and EZLN, p. 382, 384.

116 Patel, ‘Transgressing Rights’, p. 92.

117 Robles, Wilder, ‘The Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2:146–161 (2001), p. 147CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Similar ‘land reform from below’ has been pursued in Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Paraguay, India, Thailand, and elsewhere. See Rosset, ‘Food Sovereignty’.

118 Rosset, ‘Food Sovereignty’, p. 22.

119 Ibid.

120 Translated and cited in Wittman, Hannah, ‘Reframing Agrarian Citizenship: Land, Life and Power in Brazil’, Journal of Rural Studies, 25:1 (2009), p. 128CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

121 Ibid., p. 122.

122 Rosset, ‘Food Sovereignty’, p. 24.

123 Ibid.

124 Ibid.

125 Vergara-Camus, ‘Politics’, p. 179.

126 Rosset, ‘Food Sovereignty’, p. 25.

127 Wittman, ‘Reframing’, pp. 121, 125.

128 Vergara-Camus, ‘Politics’, p. 188. The regular participation that is required to maintain affiliation with the MST can also be felt as a form of oppression. One participant interviewed by Wittman (Reframing, p. 126) indicated that participation wasn't ‘worth it’ as he ‘wasn't compensated for his political activities and needed time to cultivate his land’. This serves to reaffirm that no emancipation is ever perfect.

129 Rosset, ‘Food Sovereignty’, p. 25.

130 Vergara-Camus, ‘Politics’, p. 185.

131 MST member, cited in Wittman, ‘Reframing’, p. 125.

132 Vergara-Camus, Leandro, ‘The Legacy of Social Conflicts over Property Rights in Rural Brazil and Mexico’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 39:5 (2012), p. 1149CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

133 Meszaros, George, ‘The MST and the Rule of Law in Brazil’, Law, Social Justice and Global Development, 1 (2007), pp. 9, 11Google Scholar.

134 Meszaros, George, ‘Taking the Law into Their Hands’, Journal of Law and Society, 27:4 (2000) p. 525CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

135 INCRA, translated in Ibid., p. 529.

136 Brazilian judge, interviewed in ibid.

137 Vergara-Camus, ‘Politics’, p. 188.

138 Wittman, ‘Reframing’, p. 121.

139 Ibid., p. 127.

140 João Pedro Stédile, interviewed in Pinassi, Maria Orlandaet al., ‘An Interview with João Pedro Stédile’, Latin American Perspectives, 27 (2000), p. 54Google Scholar. Wolford, Wendy, ‘Participatory Democracy by Default’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 37:1 (2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar explores cases in which MST occupations were regularised and legalised.

141 Interviewed in Claeys, Priscilla, ‘The Creation of New Rights by the Food Sovereignty Movement: the Challenge of Institutionalizing Subversion’, Sociology, 46:5 (2012), p. 854CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

142 Nicholson, Paul and Delforge, Isabelle, ‘Via Campesina: Responding to Global Systemic Crisis’, Development, 51:4 (2008), p. 457CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

143 Vergara-Camus, ‘Legacy’, p. 1150.

144 Meszaros, George, ‘No Ordinary Revolution: Brazil's Landless Workers Movement’, Race and Class, 42 (2000), p. 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

145 Cooper, Neil, ‘Training Goldfish (in a Desert): Transforming Political Economies of Conflict Using Voluntarism, Regulation and Supervision’, in Richmond, Oliver P. (ed.), Peacebuilding: Critical Developments and Approaches (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 307–29Google Scholar.

146 Via Campesina, ‘Our members’, available at: {http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/organisation-mainmenu-44/our-members-mainmenu-71} accessed 13 December 2013.

147 Interviewed in Martinez-Torres and Rosset, ‘La Via Campesina’, p. 164.

148 Ibid., p. 158.

149 European Peasant leader, interviewed in Martinez-Torres and Rosset, ‘La Via Campesina’, p. 164.

150 Borras Jr, ‘Transnational Agrarian Movements’, pp. 779–80.

151 Patel, ‘Transgressing Rights’, p. 89.

152 Martinez-Torres and Rosset, ‘La Via Campesina’, p. 158.

153 La Via Campesina, ‘Food Sovereignty: a Future Without Hunger’ (1996), available at: {http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/library/1996%20Declaration%20of%20Food%20Sovereignty.pdf} accessed 2 January 2014.

154 Campesina, Via, ‘Nyéléni Declaration on Food Sovereignty’ (2007), Journal of Peasant Studies, 36:3 (2009), p. 673Google Scholar.

155 Linklater, ‘Political Community’, p. 121. Via Campesina's notion of food sovereignty is not incompatible, therefore, with cosmopolitan human rights principles, and might offer a form of cosmopolitanism from below or a ‘vernacular’ cosmopolitanism. See Werbner, Pnina (ed.), Anthropology and the New Cosmopolitanism (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2009)Google Scholar.

156 Ibid., p. 168.

157 Human Rights Council Advisory Committee (HRAC), ‘Preliminary Study on the Advancement of the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas’ (2010), available at: {http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/advisorycommittee/docs/session6/A.HRC.AC.6.CRP.2_en.pdf} accessed 13 December 2013.

158 Claeys, ‘Institutionalizing Subversion’, p. 852.

159 Borras, Saturnino Jr, ‘La Via Campesina and its Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 8:2 (2008), p. 282CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

160 HRAC, Preliminary Study.

161 See Borras Jr, ‘Global Campaign’.

162 Richmond, ‘Critical Agency’, p. 143.

163 Blakeley, ‘Emancipation’, p. 319.

164 Browning and McDonald, ‘Future’, p. 237.

165 Hynek and Chandler, ‘No Alternative’, p. 50.