J Agric Environ Ethics (2011) 24:545–547 DOI 10.1007/s10806-010-9267-1 BOOK REVIEW
Schanbacer, William D: The Politics of Food: The Global Conflict Between Food Security and Food Sovereignty Praeger, Santa Barbara, CA, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-313-36328-3, $34.95 hardback Cornelia Butler Flora Accepted: 19 May 2010 / Published online: 6 June 2010 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
For Schanbacer, food security epitomizes a neo-liberal approach to development. It suggests dependence on transnational market mechanisms to ship commodities from one place (of food overproduction) to another (of food underproduction). Food sovereignty, on the other hand, symbolizes all manner of movements for liberation from oppression, from the Zapatistas to the women’s movement. This polemic exaggerates each position by narrowing the notion of food security and expanding that of food sovereignty. He uses those sharp distinctions as a way to explore the human rights dimension of access to and control over food in a quite compelling way. The current food system, he asserts, and then logically demonstrates, is governed by the precepts of food security and constitutes a massive violation of human rights. The ethical argument of the justice of the emerging food sovereignty movement and injustice of the dominant food security paradigm constitutes the crux of the book. Schanbacer makes the ethical case for food sovereignty by examining food security and its champions from theoretical and policy lens, although more use of primary documents and less dependence on the interpretations of a variety of advocacy groups would have strengthened his case. His concern is global poverty, hunger, and malnutrition and the role of food in either perpetuating or eliminating them. Food security, he argues is based on dependence masked by ‘‘market forces,’’ which justify the exploitation of land and labor. In contrast, food sovereignty is based on interdependence and respect for the environment. He traces the emergence of the food security doctrine following World War II and Breton Woods, and relates it to the way that international institutions view poverty, as well as to how they attempt to reduce it. He compares how different international institutions frame poverty and hunger and how they then act on that mental model. For example, FAO C. B. Flora (&) Iowa State University, 317 East Hall, Ames, IA 50011-1070, USA e-mail:
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is not quite as adamant about linkage to international markets as the solution to poverty and hunger as is the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The food security approach breeds inequality, removes the state from its responsibilities for human and environmental well-being, and rewards greed and environmental degradation. Food is a commodity to be bought and sold. In contrast, Schanbacer attributes the food sovereignty movement with a multitude of virtues: ‘‘a local-, family-, and community-based ethic that stresses the values of sustainability, interdependence, environmental protection and local production for local consumption.’’ Food sovereignty approaches food as a human right. This conflation of attributes may not be empirically verifiable, but helps frame a case for attention to negative rights that provide the freedom to pursue these goals collectively and the discussion of capabilities as put forward by Amartya Sen and Martha Nessbaum. The capabilities approach ‘‘is grounded in how we conceive freedom as well as the role that freedom plays in the way that we organize our social relationships and arrangements.’’ However, this approach focuses a great deal on individual freedoms to achieve individual goals, while food sovereignty focuses on collective goals. It could be argued that property rights are the basis of food security, while human rights are the basis of food sovereignty. Schanbacer shows how food sovereignty can secure negative rights, freedom from having something harmful or objectionable inflicted. He argues that these negative human rights can then help assure positive human rights that require the actions of other people. Negative human rights mean that other people will not act in ways that impinge on the ability of a community to provide for itself that which is required for decent livelihoods and collective well-being. Building on Thomas Pogge, he argues that a food sovereignty approach ‘‘holds morally accountable all those who participate in the creation and preservation of socially harmful institutions and social arrangement.’’ This is a much more powerful argument than simply saying that developed countries should give food aid to developing countries, which is part of the food security discourse. Schanbacer places food sovereignty as a social movement as a relational approach to ending hunger—‘‘mutual well-being over self-interest, cooperation over competition, the survival of communities, traditions, and cultural values over unfettered growth and consumption.’’ As such, the volume is an excellent base for class discussion, There are some problems in the references—lack of dates, references listed twice in different places—and the book really needs a list of acronyms, which seem endemic when discussing international development. And it is too bad that wellmeaning scholars such as Schanbacer, use the term ‘‘free market’’ when they really mean ‘‘market.’’ It is the market, which is highly controlled and manipulated by those with wealth that increases capital accumulation in the hands of the few, not a ‘‘free market’’, which does not exist. Food sovereignty does not remove the market, but constructs market relationships in new ways. The principles of local, social justice, reciprocity, and dignity and return for all labor become embedded in the market mechanisms. Schanbacer’s method of countering the damage of the food security approach draws on his religious study. First comes the confession of sin by acknowledging
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our complicity in the current unjust food system and its highly negative consequences. Then comes the recognition of food as a human right and the need to remove or restructure the institutions that deny that right, either implicitly or explicitly. To achieve food sovereignty, activists are aware that the institutions that deny food as a human right are not just food related. There needs to be environmentally safe and sustainable development built on the capacities of local people and their cultures.
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