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La Via Campesina and the Committee on World Food Security: a transnational public sphere? Identifying and interrogating dynamics of power and voice in transnational food and agricultural policy processes.

The transnationalisation of economic relations and the
emergence of supranational sites of policy-making and governance have
been of concern both to ¿affected publics¿ subject to the remote decisionmaking
that such developments entail (and who have mobilised extensively
to demonstrate their opposition to these bodies), and scholars keen to locate
the possibilities for a democratic politics in the context of the state¿s
subsequent diminishment (O¿Brien et al., 2000; Scholte, 2001; Patomäki and
Teivainen, 2004; Rittberger et al., 2008). One such group of scholars are
public sphere theorists, who, taking up an ongoing concern with the
conditions for, and criteria of, effective democratic participation in politically
authoritative policy debates, and responding to these new dynamics, have
begun to define a new research agenda in search of ¿transnational public
spheres¿ (Habermas, 1989; Fraser, 1991; Fraser 2007). That is, they have
begun to look to the transnational for sites in which those affected by the
exercise (or, indeed, absence) of political authority at this level strive to
engage that authority in policy debate. In this thesis, I argue for the existence
of one such transnational public sphere, which, being both provoked and
constituted by the transnational peasant and small farmers social movement
La Via Campesina, promises to be institutionally realised by the recently
reformed United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS).
Identifying and exploring key dynamics relevant to the CFS¿s aspirations for
political centrality, inclusivity, and policy debate, moreover, I lay bare the
challenges that confront the attainment of this promise.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/5706
Date January 2011
CreatorsBrem-Wilson, Joshua W.
ContributorsChesters, Graeme
PublisherUniversity of Bradford, Department of Peace Studies
Source SetsBradford Scholars
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis, doctoral, PhD
Rights<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />The University of Bradford theses are licenced under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Licence</a>.

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