Food sovereignty

In: Österreichische Zeitschrift für Südostasienwissenschaften: ASEAS = Austrian journal of South-East Asian studies : ASEAS, Band 8, Heft 1, S. 1-105

Abstract

Sovereignties of Food: Political Struggle and Life-World Encounters in Southeast Asia - Christiane Voßemer, Judith Ehlert, Michelle Proyer, & Ralph Guth. - Food Sovereignty and Conceptualization of Agency: A Methodological Discussion - Judith Ehlert & Christiane Voßemer, S. 7-26, Abstract: The latest food crisis hit food producers and consumers - mainly in the Global South - hard and refocused attention to the question of global food security. The food sovereignty movement contributes to the growing re-politicization of the debate on 'how to feed the world'. From an actor-oriented perspective, the article presents a methodological reflection of the concept of food sovereignty in opposition to the concept of food security, both agendas highly relevant in terms of food policies in Southeast Asia. After framing the two concepts against the development politics and emergence of global agriculture following World War II, this paper elaborates on how actors and agency are conceptualized under the food security regime as well as by the food sovereignty movement itself. With reference to these two concepts, we discuss in which ways an actor-oriented methodological approach is useful to overcome the observed essentialization of the peasantry as well as the neglect of individual peasants and consumers as food-sovereign actors. (ASEAS/GIGA). - Where Peasants Are Kings: Food Sovereignty in the Tagbanua Traditional Subsistence System - Sophia M. M. Cuevas, Juan E. C. Fernandez, & Imelda DG. Olvida, S. 27-44, Abstract: Food sovereignty is predicated upon the rights of communities to determine culturally meaningful methods of agricultural cultivation in order to ensure the security of their diets and their lifeworld. The article provides an ethnographic study of two Tagbanua indigenous communities in the province of Palawan, Philippines, and analyzes the relation between swidden agriculture and food sovereignty. Traditional swidden farming is an integrative system that defines social relationships, structures a spiritual belief system, and builds a fundament of the Tagbanua identity. As a cultural praxis, it is also central to the manifestation of food sovereignty within the market system, constantly being challenged by internal exigencies - as opportunities for cultural reproduction are limited by changing lifestyles - and external interventions from both private and public sectors. The article discusses how the Tagbanua subsistence cultivation system serves as the main mechanism through which indigenous cultural communities assert their independence from the market system, thus establishing local control over food and food production systems. (ASEAS/GIGA)