Events

CHAIRPERSON

Assoc Prof Jamie Davidson, Asia Research Institute, and Department of Political Science, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

The contemporary global food system has produced contradictory outcomes: more than enough food to feed everyone in the world, yet it generated a billion chronically hungry people. Struggles to dismantle the industrial food system and transition to a democratic and sustainable system have inspired widespread agrarian and food activism. Yet, the industrialization and chemicalization of food and agriculture have only gained greater momentum worldwide. At the heart of food politics is the politics of land. Informed by international experiences, especially those from Southeast Asia, this talk argues that a key factor that sustains the industrial food system and poses an obstacle to food sovereignty is the deeply undemocratic global land regime. There is no way a local community can transition to agroecology if they have no access to and control over land for production and social reproduction. Part of the problem is the narrow and sectoralized struggles for land that have often deteriorated to ‘petty reformism’ around ‘land tenure securitization’ policy narrative. Some of the relatively vibrant struggles for land reform are at best ‘merely agrarian’, unable to connect to wider struggles for systemic transformations. In the struggle to dismantle the current food system while constructing an alternative, the key challenge is how to go beyond being ‘merely agrarian’. A first step is to broaden our understanding of land politics to mean a struggle for ‘land regime democratization’ across the board, system-wide. Such a framework necessarily takes land in the context of inseparable spheres of production and social reproduction, and locates land politics in the rural-urban continuum, at times across national borders. The struggles for social change thus require building robust agrarian, rural and rural-urban movements and alliances, and not just agrarian movements.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER & DISCUSSANT

Saturnino M. Borras Jr. is Professor of Agrarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Netherlands, and was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Peasant Studies for 15 years, until early 2023. He is also a Distinguished Professor at China Agricultural University, Beijing, and an associate at the Netherlands-based Transnational Institute (TNI). He was on the Web of Science Highly Cited Researchers List for five consecutive years (2018-22) and has received the Ester Boserup Prize for Research on Development (2020).

Marvin Joseph Montefrio is Associate Professor of Social Science (Environmental Studies) and Head of Studies at Yale-NUS College. A/P Montefrio draws from multiple interdisciplinary theories to explore the political ecology and cultural politics of historical and contemporary food issues, in the context of globalisation, sustainability, and climate change. His most recent research projects examine the cultural politics of sustainable food (organic food production, locavourism, agritourism, and urban agriculture) and the impact of climate change on food security in Southeast Asia.

ARI ASIA TRENDS SERIES

ASIA TRENDS is the Asia Research Institute’s (ARI) signature talk series. It features insights from ARI’s research on social, cultural and political issues facing Singapore and Asia. The series aims to bring together scholars, stakeholders and members of the public to share knowledge and exchange ideas on the trends and challenges affecting society today.

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed. Please write to aritm@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the talk.