The micropolitics of transforming global food governance: food sovereignty movements in the UN Committee on World Food Security

Abstract

This thesis is about the micropolitics of transforming food and agriculture governance institutions in a complex and uncertain world. For decades, food sovereignty movement actors have been collectively mobilising to defend their livelihoods and resist the privatisation of land, seeds, labour, culture and knowledge, while forging a coalitional politics with diverse actors to cultivate new liberatory social relations. Historically, social movements have primarily organised outside formal governance institutions. But since 2010, food sovereignty movement actors have been participating in policy negotiations inside the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) through an autonomous International Civil Society and Indigenous People’s Mechanism (CSIPM). This study shows how a locally rooted, yet globally extensive ‘movement of movements’ is doing governance differently by bringing their transformative efforts within the formal institutions of global food governance. This research was undertaken as an experimental praxis of working in solidarity with CSIPM participants as part of a small, trusted group of academics and NGO staff over more than three years. Although I utilised classic ethnographic methods of interviews, participant observation, and document analysis, the research was practice oriented, with the primary aim of contributing to transformative movement building efforts of which I am a part. In this thesis, I build on and depart from standard political economic approaches that tend to focus on macropolitical dynamics, and political science analyses that foreground processes of rational deliberation and consensus-building. While both approaches are useful, they elude the complex, embodied, emotional, and relational micropolitical work involved in transformative change efforts. This thesis draws on diverse scholarship, including poststructuralist feminist, Indigenous, institutional, and social movement theories and practices to offer a micropolitical account of food sovereignty movement actors’ transformative efforts in the CFS. Through the thesis, I explore four key dimensions of transformative work. First, I offer an account of the micropolitics of grassroots participation in CFS policy processes, highlighting the seemingly mundane but decisive factors supporting and constraining their meaningful and effective engagement. Second, I explore how discursive struggles over ideas and meanings of concepts like food security, markets, agroecology, and innovation highlight the need for a mode of policy-making that is both willing to confront hidden and avoided power dynamics while attending to shared vulnerability. Third, I consider the embodied, emotional, and affective experience of participation in policy negotiations, arguing that the places where policy discussions are convened play a crucial (but often overlooked) role in shaping deliberations. I show how the design of formal governance sites shape interaction in highly formalised ways that limit more vulnerable, honest, and dynamic ways of relating. Finally, I show how those involved in the CSIPM are engaged in relational practices of self- and collective reflexivity that offer insights for those involved and interested in transformative movement building. This research acknowledges the realities of grassroots struggles against transnational agribusiness corporations that have captured an ever-greater share of the commons, the challenges of holding governments accountable to their publics, and the frustrations of working in bureaucratic, technical institutions.

Date of Award	2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Western Sydney University
Supervisor	Stephen Healy (Supervisor)