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- Convenors:
-
Abhinita Mohanty
(O. P. Jindal Global University)
Shamindra Roy (OP Jindal Global University)
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- Formats:
- Panel
Short Abstract
This panel seeks to understand Indigenous food sovereignty movements not only as a site of social struggle but as a generative practice that transcends polarising binaries. It invites ethnographic, theoretical, engaged research that illuminates pathways beyond conflict and sustainable food futures.
Long Abstract
In an era characterized by deepening social, political, and economic polarisation, global food systems have become a critical frontline where conflicts over land, resources, governance, and cultural survival unfold. This panel examines the complex interactions between polarising forces—manifested through state policies, corporate agendas, and geopolitical contests—and the diverse movements and Indigenous food systems that seek to resist and transform these dynamics towards more just, sustainable, and equitable outcomes.
These polarising forces shape food security strategies in ways that often reinforce exclusion and inequality, creating binary divisions between state-led development models and grassroots Indigenous and peasant movements.
This panel foregrounds food sovereignty as a radical political framework and movement that challenges dominant food regimes by emphasizing the rights of peoples to define their own food systems. Indigenous food sovereignty and community-led sustainable practices provide crucial alternatives that reconnect social, cultural, and ecological knowledges, fostering resilience and relational governance models grounded in reciprocity, care, and participation.
Contributors can explore:
The multidimensional impacts of food and agricultural policies on Indigenous and local communities, focusing on how these policies interact with polarising political economies.
Movement-based responses that mobilise around land rights, seed sovereignty, and sustainable resource management, acting as counterforces to polarisation
The synergies/tensions between food sovereignty movements and state-led food security initiatives, interrogating how policy frameworks can either polarise or bridge divides.
Case studies highlighting Indigenous-led innovations in sustainable food systems that transcend traditional binaries of conflict by promoting mutual flourishing.
Methodological and ethical dimensions of research supporting Indigenous food movements, including participatory approaches.
The role of advocacy, academic activism, and public engagement in shaping broader food justice conversations.
By investigating these themes, the panel aims to contribute to urgent debates on how anthropology and allied disciplines can critically engage polarisation while amplifying the transformative potential of Indigenous and grassroots food systems.
Accepted papers
Session 1Paper short abstract
The questions that I wish to explore in this paper situate food at the centre of these ecological and capitalist transitions in Majuli. How do Mishing women navigate ecological vulnerability and capitalist threats while practising their traditional food practices?
Paper long abstract
This paper focuses on the food practices of the Mishing tribe in Majuli of Assam - one of the world’s largest human-inhabited river islands. Majuli is an interesting location - in recent years, it has been facing a significant ecological threat - soil erosion. The land area of the island is shrinking. It is home to Assam’s unique neo-Vaishnavite culture as well as the Mishing tribe. The Mishings are an indigenous community and pride themselves on their ecologically sustainable lifestyle. Food is a major part of it, and women play a significant role in their food practices. They hunt, forage and cook. The living and cooking practices are closely tied to nature. But at the same time, Majuli is a tourist hub. There is an influx of both Indian and non-Indian tourists from all over the world. As such, they face both an ecological and a capitalist threat. The questions that I wish to explore in this paper situate food at the centre of these ecological and capitalist transitions in Majuli. How do Mishing women navigate ecological vulnerability and capitalist threats while practising their traditional food practices? How do they protect their traditional indigenous knowledge in the face of such competition? Is there an intersection between the ethnic, the national and the global in how Mishing culinary identity is created? How are women defining their food-centred roles in a transitioning political economy? I wish to answer these questions using qualitative methods of enquiry like interviews, observation and ethnography.
Paper short abstract
India's tribal communities face agrarian distress, multidimensional poverty exacerbated by neoliberal policies and other factors. Non-Timber Forest Produce sustains many. This study argues NTFP offers viable non-farm livelihoods amid agricultural risks, yet faces exploitation and policy shortfalls.
Paper long abstract
India's tribal communities endure agrarian distress and multidimensional poverty, with states like Jharkhand (MPI 0.246) and Madhya Pradesh (0.196) exemplifying vulnerabilities from neoliberal policies, mining, and FRA land rights erosion. Non-Timber Forest Produce (NTFP)—mahua, sal seeds, tamarind, medicinal plants—sustains 275 million people, contributing 20-25% of forest revenue and 12-24% of household wild foods for nutrition and resilience.
This paper contends that NTFP represents a viable non-farm livelihood pathway amid agricultural risks, yet systemic barriers—middlemen exploitation, infrastructure deficits, gender inequities (women collect but men control markets), and policy gaps—undermine potential. TRIFED's Van Dhan Vikas Yojana (VDVY) promises value addition and market linkages, but a political ecology lens reveals power imbalances: uneven state implementation, fund delays, and ecological marginality perpetuate stratified benefits. Challenges include low MSP enforcement, storage issues, and migration to unskilled labour; strengths lie in women's empowerment and pockets of market success.
Findings highlight NTFP's role in food security (12-24% of diets from wild foods), income diversification, and resilience, but limitations include funding delays (30% unreleased), poor market linkages, and ecological risks. Recommendations urge accelerated operationalisation of VDVK, community-led pricing/MSP enforcement, digital training, sustainable harvesting, and FRA alignment for empowerment.
This evidence-based critique advocates value addition, branding, and participatory policies to transform NTFP into equitable, resilient tribal economies that foster food sovereignty and rural equity.
Paper short abstract
This paper explores Yucatec Mayan engagement with agrobiodiversity conservation as an example of Indigenous food sovereignty movements which propose alternative food futures beyond the dualism of tradition and modernity.
Paper long abstract
Loss of plant genetic diversity is a pressing concern in view of food globalization today. In this context, the role of Indigenous communities in agrobiodiversity conservation warrants attention. Maya-speaking farmers in the Yucatan Peninsula continue to cultivate landraces of corn and other plants, drawing on ancestral seeds and knowledge which have been transmitted from generation to generation. Practicing the polyculture farming called milpa is a central means of subsistence food supply and as such, essential for maintaining local food sovereignty. However, there is an increasing tendency to turn away from it – especially among young generations. Apart from ecological, political and socioeconomic factors which have made livelihoods based on milpa increasingly difficult, the abandonment of farmwork should also be seen in the context of colonialist and capitalist ideologies. According to the prevalent narrative of progress, milpa way of living is devalued as a counterpart of modernity. While the continued practice of milpa agriculture is threatened this way, Maya-speaking farmers resist the pressure posed on the autochthonous foodway through a variety of actions. In their struggle for native maize, they engage a larger number of stakeholders beyond the local Indigenous communities and thus transcend polarizing binaries such as traditional versus modern, peasant versus cosmopolitan, Indigenous versus non-Indigenous, and subsistence economy versus market economy. This paper explores Yucatec Mayan engagement with agrobiodiversity conservation as an example of Indigenous food sovereignty movements which propose alternative food futures beyond the dualism of tradition and modernity.
Paper short abstract
Based on long-term ethnographic research in China’s Hani Rice Terraces, this paper examines why Indigenous farmers continue to cultivate under heritage governance and tourism development, showing how everyday farming sustains food sovereignty through negotiated, future-oriented practices.
Paper long abstract
Recognised as a UNESCO Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System, the Hani Rice Terraces are commonly governed through state-led frameworks of food security and heritage conservation that prioritise landscape maintenance while often neglecting the everyday conditions required for sustained cultivation. Yet the continuity of this living agricultural system ultimately depends on farmers’ own decisions to keep farming. Under conditions shaped by smallholder marginalisation, heritage governance, and tourism development, why do people still choose to cultivate? Based on long-term ethnographic research in the core communities of the Hani Rice Terraces in southwest China, this paper draws on participant observation, in-depth interviews, and comparative analysis across generations and livelihood strategies. It shows that cultivation has shifted from a taken-for-granted collective obligation to a selective and negotiated practice, shaped by generational change, labour scarcity, and the uneven redistribution of heritage- and tourism-derived value. The paper conceptualises everyday farming as a generative practice of Indigenous food sovereignty, enacted through pragmatic negotiations among economic calculation, ethical responsibility, social recognition, and attachments to land. The findings suggest that governance interventions focused on technical landscape repair often undermine farmers’ agency and accelerate disengagement. By contrast, institutional mechanisms that redistribute the terraces’ multiple values—food, landscape, and heritage—to active cultivators can reactivate farming as a dignified and sustainable livelihood choice. The paper shows that Indigenous food systems persist less through overt political mobilisation than through everyday, future-oriented practices that work within, and sometimes beyond, state-led frameworks, thereby transcending polarising binaries of state/community, tradition/modernity, and resistance/compliance.
Paper short abstract
This paper follows an organic farmers cooperative’s experiences as its innovative low-cost, trust-based method of organic certification was adapted into a national certification regime in India. It analyzes the impact of digitization and centralization to regulate a growing domestic organic market.
Paper long abstract
This presentation follows the creation and implementation of state regulations impacting India’s expanding domestic market for organic food, and their effects on small-scale farmers and local organic food networks. Based on immersive ethnographic fieldwork with the Timbaktu Collective—a non-profit based in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh—I follow how some of this organization’s experiments with making organic farming viable were adopted by the Indian state that has been actively promoting organic and natural farming through its recent policies. In 2005, the Timbaktu Collective introduced the use of a low-cost, trust-based, peer-review method of organic certification called Participatory Guarantee System or “PGS” for its two thousand-plus membership. Seeing the success of this method of certification, the Indian state created and mandated its own “PGS-India” certificate for all Indian organic producers catering to the domestic market, formalizing many such local practices and innovations which sustained India’s alternative food movement.
I build on participant observation during 2022 and 2023 when I visited Timbaktu as a researcher and volunteer facilitating this organization’s migration from their own PGS-Organic Council certificate to the national “PGS-India” certification regime. I document the effects of “scaling up” this “technology of trust” (in farmers, cooperatives, and the organic-ness of food) from the local to the national-level. The paper delves into debates over regulation and its efficacy by critically analyzing the ongoing effects of the digitization, centralization, and formalization of what were previously small-scale, locally engendered pockets of alternatives to the dominant food system.