ABSTRACT

Food sovereignty is an emerging discourse of empowerment and autonomy in the food system with the development of associated practices in rural and some urban spaces. While literature on food sovereignty has proliferated since the first usage of the term in 1996 at the Rome Food Summit, most has been descriptive rather than explanatory in nature, and often confuses food sovereignty with other movements and objectives such as alternative food networks, food justice, or food self-sufficiency. 

This book is a collection of empirically rich and theoretically engaged papers across a broad geographical spectrum reflecting on what constitutes the politics and practices of food sovereignty. They contribute to a theoretical gap in the food sovereignty literature as well as a relative shortage of empirical work on food sovereignty in the global "North", much previous work having focussed on Latin America. Specific case studies are included from Canada, Norway, Switzerland, southern Europe, UK and USA, as well as Africa, India and Ecuador. 

The book presents new research on the emergence of food sovereignties. It offers a wide variety of empirical examples and a theoretically engaged framework for explaining the aims of actors and organizations working toward autonomy and democracy in the food system.

chapter 1|12 pages

Putting food sovereignty in place

part I|72 pages

Discourse

chapter 2|20 pages

Where are the local communities?

Food sovereignty discourse on international agrobiodiversity conservation strategies

chapter 3|19 pages

Farmers, foodies and First Nations

Getting to food sovereignty in Canada?

chapter 4|15 pages

Food sovereignty in the global North

The application of a social justice framework for a common language and approach

chapter 5|16 pages

Framing food provisioning research in the UK

Whither food sovereignty?

part II|76 pages

Politics

chapter 6|19 pages

Food security, food sovereignty, and the nation-state

Historicizing Norwegian farmland policy

chapter 8|18 pages

Repositioning food sovereignty

Between Ecuadorian nationalist and cosmopolitan politics

chapter 9|18 pages

Talking around it

Food sovereignty as a unifying discourse in the Southern Alberta food system

part III|68 pages

Practice

chapter 10|13 pages

Framing multiple food sovereignties

Comparing the Nyéléni Declaration and the Local Food and Self-Governance Ordinance in Maine

chapter 12|14 pages

Food sovereignty in the fields

Seed exchange and participatory plant breeding of wheat landraces in Italy

chapter 13|17 pages

When global goes sweet, locals turn sour

Wine sovereignty in Switzerland