Political Ecology of Agriculture: Agroecology and Post-Development

by Omar Felipe Giraldo

This study discusses an original proposal aimed at critically analyzing the power relations that exist in contemporary agriculture. The author endeavors herein to clarify some of the strategies that industrial agribusiness, in collusion with the state and multilateral structures, sets in motion in order to functionalize the lives of millions of farmers, so that their bodies, enunciations, and sensibilities can be repurposed in accordance with the dynamics of capital accumulation. The argument is based on the idea that agro-extractivism cannot be thought of exclusively as an economic-political and technological system, but as a complex interweaving of cultural meanings, aesthetics, and affections, which, amalgamated under the abstract name of "development", act as a support for the whole system's scaffolding.



The book also explores the other side of the coin, describing how, and under what conditions, social movements are responding to the calamities generated by this model. The central thesis is that many ongoing agroecological processes are providing one of the most interesting guidelines at present for visualizing transitions towards post-development, post-extractivism, and the construction of multiple worlds beyond the sphere of capital.



Political ecology of agriculture joins the calls that question the cultural project of modernity and the predatory sense imposed by the globalized food empire, and invites recognition of the importance of agroecology in the context of the end of the fossil-fuel era and the likely collapse of our industry-based civilization.

169 pages, Hardcover

Published March 7, 2019

About the author

Doctor en Ciencias Agrarias del Departamento de Sociología Rural de la Universidad Autónoma Chapingo y posdoctorado del Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales de la UNAM. Magister en Desarrollo Rural de la Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica y Médico Veterinario de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Por mi tesis doctoral obtuve el Premio Arturo Fregoso Urbina de la UACh a la mejor tesis de doctorado del año 2013 y la mención honorífica del Premio Cátedra Jorge Alonso a la mejor tesis doctoral en ciencias sociales de México, 2013, otorgado por el CIESAS y la Universidad de Guadalajara. Me desempeñé como asesor-consultor de las Naciones Unidas en Colombia durante varios años. He sido docente en la Licenciatura en Sociología en la UNAM, profesor de posgrado en la Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica, profesor invitado internacional en la Universidad Nacional de Colombia y Uniminuto, y actualmente en ECOSUR, soy titular del curso en Pensamiento Ambiental y Ecología Política, y colaboro como coresponsable en el Seminario Agroecología y Sociedad. Soy autor de varios artículos en revistas especializadas y de los libros "Utopías en la era de la Supervivencia. Una interpretación del Buen Vivir" (Editorial Itaca, 2014) y "Ecología Política de la Agricultura. Agroecología y posdesarrollo" (Ecosur, 2018). Mis áreas de interés son la ecología política, disputas territoriales y conflictos socioambientales. Construcción de alternativas al desarrollo y movimientos sociales. Crítica a la modernidad, crisis civilizatoria y filosofía ambiental. Sociología Rural. Epistemología ambiental. Procesos de re-territorialización , re-campesinización y re-apropiación de la naturaleza y la cultura. Escalamiento de la agroecología.

Reviews

[mkmk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life-changing. Basically says that any radical moevement that tries to change the system will never change the system if it's institutionalized under that system. Here it's about food production and agroecology. The point is: you cannot institutionalize agroecology because the point of agroecology is to question the system and institutionalized ways of producing food.