Food Sovereignty and Agroecology in the Convergence of Rural Social Movements

Abstract

In this chapter we focus on food sovereignty and agroecology, in the transnational peasant social movement La Via Campesina, as issues which help us analyze mechanisms of internal convergence in rural social movements. We examine such convergence through the building of collective processes, and in the construction of mobilizing frames for collective action. In particular, we analyze the encounter and diálogo de saberes (dialog among different knowledges and ways of knowing) between different rural cultures (East, West, North, and South; peasant, indigenous, and rural proletarian; etc.) that take place within it. This dialog among the “absences” left out by the dominant monoculture of ideas, has led to a process of convergence that has yielded important “emergences,” which range from mobilizing frames for collective action – like the food sovereignty concept – to social methodologies for the spread of agroecology among peasant families.

Citation

Rosset, P.M. and Martínez-Torres, M.E. (2014), "Food Sovereignty and Agroecology in the Convergence of Rural Social Movements", Alternative Agrifood Movements: Patterns of Convergence and Divergence (Research in Rural Sociology and Development, Vol. 21), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 137-157. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1057-192220140000021001