Transnational participatory democracy in action: The case of La Via Campesina

Journal of Social Philosophy

Volumn 39, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 20-41

  Menser, Michael ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 77957238070     PISSN: 00472786     EISSN: 14679833     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9833.2007.00409.x     Document Type: Article

References (62)

1. Daniel Weinstock, "The Real World of (Global) Democracy," Journal of Social Philosophy 37, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 6.
2. For my first attempt at defining maximal democracy, see Michael Menser, "The Global Social Forum Movement, Porto Alegre's 'Participatory Budget,' and the Maximization of Democracy," Situations: A Journal of the Radical Imagination 1, no. 1 (Fall 2005): 87-108.
3. All of these politics have the following in common: the political, economic and social realms are irrevocably intertwined; (ontologically distinct or not) all are proper subjects for democratic transformation (Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude [New York: Penguin, 2004], xiii-xvii); capitalism in its current form is not reformable and the state and interstate system are an inadequate basis for the project of global democracy. They also all tend to see democracy as having an essentially ecological dimension. See Santos for one of the more nuanced explanations of what it means to be post-socialist or post-Marxist in the context of the Global Justice Movement in his "General Introduction: Reinventing Social Emancipation: Toward New Manifestos" in Democratizing Democracy: Beyond the Liberal Democratic Canon, ed. Boaventura de Sousa Santos (New York: Verso, 2005), i-xxxiii.
4. On the meaning of anarchism in the GJM, see Graeber's "The New Anarchists," New Left Review 13 (January-February 2002): 61-73,
5. Richard J. F. Day, Gramsci Is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements (Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2005).
6. On Indigenous movements and the GJM, see Paradigm Wars: Indigenous Peoples' Resistance to Globalization, ed. Jerry Mander and Victoria Tauli-Corpuz (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 2006).
7. From the Via Campesina website. Full list at http://www.viacampesina.org/ main-en/index.php?option=com-wrapper&Itemid=60.
8. My focus from here on will not be agency views as such but those that comprise the participatory democratic view. For a history of views on democracy and participation from the eighteenth century until 1970 and the recurrent marginalization of participatory views in Western political philosophy, see Carole Pateman's Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), chap. 1 and 2.
9. For a more recent take congruent with the Global Justice Movement, see Santos, "Introduction: Opening Up the Canon of Democracy," in Democratizing Democracy, ed. Boaventura de Sousa Santos (New York: Verso, 2005), xxxiv-lxxiv.
10. For skepticism on the possibility of PD, see Robert Dahl, On Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), chap. 5
11. "Can International Organizations be Democratic? A Skeptical View," in Democracy's Edges, ed. Ian Shapiro and Casiano Hacker-Cordon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 19-36.
12. Paul Hirst, Associative Democracy: New Forms of Economic and Social Governance (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts. Press), 2-29.
13. Dahl, On Democracy, 33-4.
14. See Iris Young's Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), esp. 124-53.
15. Weinstock offers two different justifications for this view. The first is epistemic: individuals are the best judges of what they want, and democracy is the best system for ensuring that the government acts on those wishes. This type of justification is frequently found in aggregative views of democracy. See Pateman, Participation, 1-22.
16. The second is motivational: democracy permits persons to pursue their interests effectively by voting, running for office, joining a political party or interest group. Weinstock, "Real World," 6-7.
17. Peter Bachrach, The Theory of Democratic Elitism: A Critique (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1967), 70-8.
18. Frank Cunningham, Theories of Democracy: A Critical Introduction (London: Routledge, 2002), 127.
19. For detailed analyses of such practices and organizations, see both Santos volumes cited above for case studies in India, Colombia, Brazil, Mozambique, and South Africa. For Argentina, see Marina Sitrin, Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006) and Day, Gramsci.
20. For an explicit linking of the popularity of PD to the failure of interest models - and neoliberalism - see D. L. Sheth's "Micro-movements in India: Toward a New Politics of Participatory Democracy" in Santos, Democratizing Democracy, 3-37.
21. See, for example, Immanuel Wallerstein's remarks on the 2007 World Social Forum http://www.alterinfos.org/spip.php?article873 and both Santos' volumes cited above.
22. Cunningham, Theories of Democracy, 141.
23. Elements of this view can be found in Vandana Shiva's Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology (London: Zed Books, 1993)
24. Earth Democracy (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2005);
25. Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, Nicholas Faraclas, and Claudia von Werlhof's There is an Alternative: Subsistence and Worldwide Resistance to Corporate Globalization (New York: Zed Books, 2001) and in those works cited in endnote 6 above.
26. Day, Gramsci, 14, 48-50.
27. Moore, "Globalization and Democratization," Journal of Social Philosophy 37, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 24-5.
28. See Menser, "The Global Social Forum Movement."
29. Carol Gould, Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 4.
30. See Hirst, Associative Democracy, 20, 50-6.
31. Ironically, Iris Young makes this criticism of associationism but then restricts the political agency of social movements to the right of representation rather than self-determination; the state - not civil society - is the only legitimate venue for the latter. See Iris Young, "Social Groups in Associative Democracy," in Associations and Democracy, ed. Erik Olin Wright (New York: Verso, 1995), 207-213.
32. Annette Aurelie Desmarais, The Via Campesina: Peasants Resisting Globalization (Diss., University of Calgary. 2003).
33. Including Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and many polytheistic faiths (see http://www.viacampesina.org).
34. Industrial agriculture is defined by the following practices: intensive tillage, monoculture planting, irrigation, application of inorganic fertilizer, chemical pest control, genetic manipulation of domesticated plants and animals, and "factory farming" of animals. Thomas Lyson, Civic Agriculture: Reconnecting Farm, Food and Community (Lebanon, NH: Tufts University Press, 2004), chap. 2 and 3;
35. Stephen R. Gliessman, Agroecology: The Ecology of Sustainable Food Systems (New York: CRC Press, 2006), 3.
36. Desmarais, "Via Campesina," 46-50, 53-5.
37. Gliessman, Agroecology, 14-8.
38. Go to http://www.ifap.org/en/about/aboutifap.html.
39. See Frederic Mousseau, "Rice and Food Sovereignty in Asia Pacific" (2006), available at http://www.viacampesina.org.
40. Desmarais, Via Campesina, 115-7, 177-222.
41. The main tenets of Food Sovereignty subscribed to by LVC and its allies are: (i) the local home unit (community, nation, state) decides food policy; (ii) the local community should own agricultural land; (iii) agricultural communities should manage production and distribution of products with regard to social need; (iv) workers have a right to a living wage and to be protected from coercion (this also includes price controls to make sure fair prices are paid to producers); (v) women's rights as agricultural producers must be recognized and protected; (vi) consumer rights are to be protected especially with respect to labeling (e.g., contains GMOs); (vii) community cultural rights are to be protected (e.g., right to grow particular foods, retain common ownership of seed stocks); and (viii) aforementioned practices should promote ecological sustainability. This list is meant to highlight the many dimensions of food sovereignty rather than articulate every detail. It is adapted from http://www.foodfirst.org/progs/global/food/finaldeclaration.html.
42. For the purposes of this essay, I will argue, following Gould, that the two articles just named can be justified by her concept of equal positive freedom. (See discussion above.) She states, "to the degree that these new localities represent quasi-voluntary associations, they can be permitted to exercise a sort of autonomy with regard to their own affairs." (Gould, Globalizing Democracy, 55.)
43. Carol Gould, "Self-determination Beyond Sovereignty: Relating Transnational Democracy to Local Autonomy," Journal of Social Philosophy 37, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 44-60.
44. http://www.viacampesina.org/main-en/index.php?option=com- content&task=view&id=57&Itemid=35.
45. Sometimes, this transformation is direct as in the case of the Morimento Sem Terra (MST) occupying Syngenta's GMO plantation and seeking to make the site into a school of agroecology. http://www.mstbrazil.org/?q=book/print/357.
46. Cohn et al., Agroecology and the Struggle for Food Sovereignty in the Americas, ed. Avery Cohn, Jonathan Cook, Margarita Fernandez, Rebecca Reider, and Corrina Steward (New Haven, CT: International Institute for Environment and Development, Yale University, 2006).
47. Kathleen McAfee, "Sustainability and Social Justice in the Global Food System," in Agroecology and the Struggle for Food Sovereignty in the Americas, ed. Avery Cohn, Jonathan Cook, Margarita Fernandez, Rebecca Reider, and Corrina Steward (New Haven, CT: International Institute for Environment and Development, Yale University, 2006).
48. Cohn et al., Agroecology and the Struggle;
49. Lyson, Civic Agriculture;
50. Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), 220-27;
51. Phil Dahl-Bredine, "Case Study: Food Sovereignty in the Mixteca Alta," in Agroecology and the Struggle for Food Sovereignty in the Americas, ed. Avery Cohn, Jonathan Cook, Margarita Fernandez, Rebecca Reider, and Corrina Steward (New Haven, CT: International Institute for Environment and Development, Yale University, 2006), 65-7.
52. http://www.mstbrazil.org/?q=book/print/101.
53. See Fausto Torrez, "Vía Campesina in Latin America Will Form an Agro-Ecological Contingent," available at http://www.viacampesina.org.
54. Nicaragua, July 2006. Available at http://www.landaction.org/display.php? article=447.
55. Michael Pimbert and M. Taghi Farvar, "Foreword," in Agroecology and the Struggle for Food Sovereignty in the Americas, ed. Avery Cohn, Jonathan Cook, Margarita Fernandez, Rebecca Reider, and Corrina Steward (New Haven, CT: International Institute for Environment and Development, Yale University, 2006), viii.
56. In the current milieu, there are good reasons for being a pluralist when it comes to models of ownership. From a practical political standpoint, a few state-based actors have backed maxD-promoting agroecology to great effect. See Margarita Fernandez, "Case Study: Cultivating Community, Food, and Empowerment: Urban Gardens in New York and Havana," in Agroecology and the Struggle for Food Sovereignty in the Americas, ed. Avery Cohn, Jonathan Cook, Margarita Fernandez, Rebecca Reider, and Corrina Steward (New Haven, CT: International Institute for Environment and Development, Yale University, 2006).
57. For detailed accounts of this democratic communal model in action, see Sue Branford and Jan Rocha's Cutting the Wire (London: Kumarian Press, 2002) on LVC member the Landless Peasants Movement (MST).
58. Also see Santos, Another Production is Possible.
59. For an excellent case study on how democratization occurs at the local level and then is configured and reconfigured regionally and nationally, see Branford and Rocha on the MST's operations in Brazil. For a detailed comparative analysis of the industrial model versus the agroecology model within the same country (India), see Shiva, Monocultures, and Ramachandra Guha, The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
60. As Shiva puts it, sustainability means maintaining the conditions of productivity in a locale over the course of several generations (Shiva, Monocultures, 50-59). This definition is consistent with that found in agroecology.
61. See Philip Green and Drucilla Cornell, "Rethinking Democratic Theory: Why the US is not a Democracy," Journal of Social Philosophy 36, no. 4 (2005): 517-35.
62. For an extensive study of the practices of the MST, see Branford and Rocha, Cutting the Wire,