ABSTRACT
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. That is, the food sovereignty vision and movement today are conditioned by the contours of the food regime – now in crisis as its ability to continue to feed the world the illusion of ‘food security’ via ‘free trade’ has lost legitimacy in the wake of the recent and continuing global food crisis (McMichael and Schneider 2011). The crisis, in turn, has generated a heightened struggle between projects of corporate agricultural intensification, and an emerging ontological alternative in ‘food sovereignty.’1 Politically, this struggle extends from contention over land grabs, evictions and genetically modified organism (GMO) monocultures on the ground (cf Borras and Franco 2013), to discursive and tactical initiatives in and between the G8, the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Under these circumstances, to historicize food sovereignty is to understand the shifting political landscape within and against which it must operate.
