ABSTRACT
This essay questions the analytic and political project of ‘food sovereignty’ by looking at class-differentiated responses to ecological crisis in two markedly different polders (embanked islands) in Bangladesh’s shrimp zone.Much of the literature on food sovereignty
Our deepest thanks to the community researchers in Khulna for their collegiality and enthusiasm in conducting this research. Special thanks also to David Bruer at Inter Pares and the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada, as well as the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future-Oxfam Rural Resilience Project at Cornell, for making this project possible. Thanks also to Khushi Kabir for her vision in planning and making the project happen, and to the Nijera Kori staff for their partnership in executing the research. Thanks in particular to Rezanur ‘Rose’ Rahman, from whom we have learned a great deal, and whose passion for the movement is a constant inspiration. Earlier drafts of this essay were presented in Fall 2013 at the Yale Agrarian Studies conference on Food Sovereignty and at the workshop, ‘Bangladesh: contested pasts, competing futures’ at the University of Texas, Austin. We thank these audiences for their generous feedback and engagement. We thank Erin Lentz, Townsend Middleton and David Rojas for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.
