The food question in the plot of state policy: food sovereignty and agroecology as problems of government

Abstract

The following research focuses on how the categories of agroecology and food sovereignty are constituted as a governance issue, based on raising a particular food issue. This work analyses how both categories circulate among international cooperation organisations (FAO and UN), activist networks at that level of government (La Vía Campesina Internacional), within the networks of Argentine state institutions linked to rural development, and among organisations of rural subaltern subjects.

As a contribution to the study of the anthropology of politics, this thesis seeks to problematise the way in which the food issue is governed from fields conceived as state and non-state.

The time frame of this study covers the period from 2007 to 2019. During this period, changes and continuities in the statehood of rural development can be distinguished, while new configurations of the subordinate rural sector emerge, mediated by new agenda items related to access, distribution and circulation of food.

This work presents a strategy for addressing multi-scalar and multi-situated issues using a qualitative methodology focused particularly on an ethnographic perspective. This allowed us to account for the native categories that are the subject of this work and also enabled access to the various ways in which different worldviews about agroecology and food sovereignty are produced.