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Accepted Paper:
The regionalisation of agrarian struggle: La Via Campesina, ALBA and the road to 'food sovereignty'
Rowan Lubbock (Birkbeck)
Paper short abstract:
This paper seeks to examine the relationship between the agrarian social movement La Via Campesina and the inter-state institution of ALBA as a means of understanding the limits and potentials to forging an effective post-hegemonic regional formation in Latin America.
Paper long abstract:
The centrality of social movements has been well understood within scholarship of contemporary Latin American politics and society. While analyses of social movement mobilisation often assumes transnational forms of resistance, the dominance of the sovereign-state system has always heavily circumscribed the efficacy of social resistance beyond the national level. With the increasing prominence of Latin American regionalisation projects, social movements have been provided the opportunity to mobilise new 'maps of grievance' at wider spatial scales. The emergence of ALBA (Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América) in particular represents a prime opportunity to examine the relationship between supra-state institutions and social movement mobilisation, given that ALBA offers the widest opening for institutional inclusion ('Council of Social Movements') and the most convergent ideological orientation (Bolivarianismo) with Latin America's anti-systemic social forces. This 'partnership of resistance' between states and civil society will be analysed by looking at the agrarian social movement La Via Campesina and its involvement in ALBA as a means of pursuing its call for 'food sovereignty'. Because of the close ideological fit between La Via Campesina and the ALBA states, it is important to identify the contradictions and contestation involved with this partnership, which will offer valuable insights into the structural and organisational obstacles to forging a meaningful and effective 'post-hegemonic' regional formation. Only by understanding the strategic difficulties encountered by social movement actors can we hope to establish new political models capable of nurturing sustainable and participatory approaches to everyday life.
Civil society and social movement mobilisation: lessons from Latin America
Session 1