“When We Stand up, They Have to Negotiate with Us”: Power Relations in and between an Agroindustrial and an Indigenous Food System in Bolivia

Johanna Jacobi and Aymara Llanque
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Johanna Jacobi: Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
Aymara Llanque: AGRUCO—Agroecología Universidad Cochabamba, Universidad Mayor de San Simón, Cochabamba 3392, Bolivia

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 11, 1-27

Abstract: Our global food system is characterized by an increasing concentration and imbalance of power, with trade-offs between hunger, inequality, unsustainable production and consumption, and profit. A systematic analysis of power imbalances in food systems is required if we are to meet the 2030 Agenda vision of promoting sustainable production and consumption patterns and ending hunger and poverty. Such an analysis, with a view to a transformation to more sustainable and just food systems, requires tools to be developed and tested in real-life case studies of food systems. To better understand the structures and mechanisms around power in food systems, this study applies a political ecology lens. We adapted the “power cube” analysis framework that was proposed by the Institute of Development Studies for the analysis of spaces, forms, and levels of power. We apply the analysis of these three dimensions of power to two food systems in the tropical lowlands of Bolivia: one agroindustrial and one indigenous. After identifying food system actors, the food system spaces in which they interact, and what forms of power they use at what levels, we discuss some implications for an emerging scientific culture of power analyses in critical sustainability assessments. Mechanisms of hidden power undermine visible legislative power in both case studies, but in our example of an indigenous food system of the Guaraní people, visible power stays with a local community through their legally recognized and communally owned and governed territory, with important implications for the realization of the right to food.

Keywords: spaces of power; power cube analysis; political ecology; agroindustrial food system; indigenous food system; Guaraní people; Bolivia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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