Engendering Food Sovereignty: Feminist Post-Development and Gendered Discourses in the Food Sovereignty Movement

Abstract: The food sovereignty movement (FSM) calls for transformative change towards equality in power over food systems and social relations, including gender relations. The purpose of this feminist critical discourse analysis (FCDA) was to gain insights into the gendered discourses of the FSM at the international level and discursive repertoires on gender and food sovereignty at the grassroots level in Tamil Nadu, India, through feminist post-development (FPD) thought on gender and transformative change. The analysis showed that at the international level, the FSM’s discourses in key texts challenge dominant neoliberal discourses, but also reveal rifts in ideological coherence on gender in discourses on the community, family, and women. At the grassroots level, the analysis suggested that discursive repertoires in interviews with staff and members of two food sovereignty-oriented organizations both resist and (re)produce dominant gender ideologies. The gendered discourses and discursive repertoires of FSM texts and actors, interpreted through a FPD lens, are part of a process of transformative change; but moving forward, actors within the FSM may reflect on how they conceptualize categories of community, family, and gender to make space for difference and choice as part of the journey towards establishing new social relations.