IV Congresso Internacional. 6-7-8 Setembro 2023. Universidade de Coimbra

SOBERANIA ALIMENTAR

Dinâmicas de produção e abastecimento na longa duração

Sessões

Conflicts and collective action on access to food sovereignty. From the first globalisation to the present.

Guillem Puig Vallverdú (Universitat Rovira I Virgili & Universitat de Barcelona – Centre d’Estudis Històrics Internacionals)

In 1889, the American economist David A. Wells highlighted in his Recent Economic Changes the peculiarity of the profitability crisis that had affected the North Atlantic powers and his colonial dependencies since the previous decade because of their economic interdependence. The effects of the Technological Revolution made the world seem smaller, but the consequences for local communities were devastating due to deflation and the change in income distribution. In much of Europe in the 1890s, the effects of the crisis were the fall in wages and the aggravation of poverty concentrated in the countryside, which would mainly result in transatlantic migration. Since then, the capitalist economic development in food production, distribution and supply has changed, but it has expanded worldwide with similar results.
This session aims to address the conflicts related to accessing food production and supply. We will pay special attention to the collective actions formulated as responses to ensure this access, the types of complaints raised and the organisations that have coordinated them. The interest for rural communities is evident, but also for the groups which, through cooperatives or other consumer organisations, play an active role in access to food sovereignty. To establish a comparative study, it will consider how these answers vary according to the political context, how they have developed on both sides of the Atlantic, and how they affect the interrelation between the countryside and the city.