In this introduction, we have asked a very classical sociological question and brought together interdisciplinary efforts to critically approach it, focusing on a basic issue: food. We briefly reconstruct the main approaches to social change in sociological theory and then identify main themes with which food studies have contributed to this debate. If, to avoid normative and formal approaches, theories of change require contextualization in order to keep their explanatory value, this volume brings historical and geographical context to provide an analysis of social change through the lenses of food. Methodologically, articles offer diverse approaches to food, allowing different kinds of perspectives on change. While statistical analysis or historically comparative sociology will provide correlational snapshots and structural transformations, ethnographies necessarily deal with change happening in the everyday. The articles in this monograph have been organized into four broad groups: (1) national cuisines as elite projects of social change; (2) science and technology as contested tools for social change; (3) social mobilization and food movements as agents of social change; and (4) micro- and macro-level change and beyond: culinary subjectivities, embodied social change and food transition.

Building on social movement analytics of coalition formation, we have established a dialogue with social theory on social inequalities and feminist scholarship on solidarity, bringing together the analytical sharpness of social movement studies with political and normative debates on solidarity building. We suggest that the processes of building solidarities that are key to coalition formation are best understood when taking into account four explanatory dimensions: context (structural conditions that might include political, economic, social and cultural institutional and various scales: from global events to national politics and organizational politics); discursive processes of framing that bridge across different social inequalities; the building of a coalitional identity and resources. We use this analytical framework to inquire into an instance of feminist coalitional politics, namely the Brazilian Marcha das Margaridas. This coalition emerged in the year 2000 and has had six editions since then, mobilizing between 20,000 to 100,000 women to Brasília. While the rural union movement forms the core of its leadership, several other partners co-organize the Marcha, including women’s movements, trade union and agrarian social movements. The prominence of a union movement denotes the centrality of working class demands and redistributive issues together with demands for the recognition of gender difference and gender equality. We query the process of emergence and alliance building in the Marcha das Margaridas in 2000 by drawing on different types of data: documental analysis of archival material produced by the coalition, ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews with activists that represent different social movements in the coalition. - Marco Antonio Teixeira & Renata Motta (2020) Unionism and feminism: alliance building in the Brazilian Marcha das Margaridas, Social Movement Studies, DOI: 10.1080/14742837.2020.1770430

STS and social movement scholars have shown the importance of ‘getting undone science done’ to advance the goals of social movements fighting environmental health injustice. The production and mobilization of counter-expertise, meaning the reliance on expertise, broadly construed, to contest regulatory decisions based on scientific knowledge, must be further analyzed by differentiating among types of expertise and strategies to mobilize them. In social mobilization against the unrestricted use of pesticides in Argentina, the affected community in Ituzaingó Anexo developed three types of expertise. The community first drew upon its own local knowledge of cases of illness and, as lay people, produced the first epidemiological map of this area. Then, they enrolled scientists and NGOs as allies to jointly learn about pesticide contamination as an explanation for illness. The enlisted scientists produced new knowledge by conducting environmental and epidemiological studies. Finally, sympathetic public health authorities, legal experts, and a district attorney designed a successful legal strategy to stop fumigations in that area and enforce local regulations. The case confirms the importance of producing undone science, and shows that its effectiveness can be explained by intertwined strategies deployed by a triad of lay/local, scientific, and legal experts to overcome the expertise barrier

A autora faz um estudo comparativo da expansão do cultivo de produtos geneticamente modificados nos dois países, que se tornaram grandes produtores de soja e se inseriram na economia global. O estudo mostra os caminhos e questiona por que os governos de esquerda tomaram rumo contrário ao esperado pelos ambientalistas e movimentos camponeses e de agricultura familiar (a partir de 2003, no Brasil, e em 2012, na Argentina) e cederam à pressão do agronegócio. Foram ouvidos ativistas de movimentos sociais envolvidos nas lutas contra as sementes transgênicas, cientistas, ambientalistas, organizações de defesa do consumidor e jornalistas. A partir desta base, a pesquisadora utilizou referenciais teóricos das ciências sociais e outros, numa perspectiva interdisciplinar. O prefácio de Marcelo Firpo Porto, pesquisador da Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, situa bem o trabalho. “Fica claro o quanto as lógicas da democracia representativa e da tecnociência, em nome de um conhecimento especializado dito universal, funcionam totalmente atreladas aos interesses de mercado e influenciam importantes políticas públicas. Ao mesmo tempo, servem para silenciar críticas e desvalorizar a construção de alternativas, nesse caso outro modelo de agricultura familiar vinculado à agroecologia, à reforma agrária e à soberania alimentar”, destaca Firpo. Renata Motta trata do papel do Estado no capitalismo contemporâneo, visto em alguns diagnósticos como administrador dos mercados financeiros e menos como garantidor de direitos. E afirma a necessidade de uma luta política emancipatória, por acreditar que, sem mobilização social, o capitalismo global trará ainda mais desigualdades e diminuição de direitos.

This book presents studies from across Latin America to take up the challenge of exploring the plurality of social inequalities from a global perspective. Accordingly, it identifies the structural forces of social inequalities on a world scale as they shape asymmetries observed in a wide array of phenomena, such as racial and gender inequality, urbanization, migration, commodity production, indigenous mobilization, ecological conflicts, and the "new middle class". A rich contribution to the study of the interconnections between the global social structure and multiple local and national hierarchies, Global Entangled Inequalities brings consistently together a variety of conceptual approaches, ranging from ethnographies to legal genealogies, and will therefore appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in social theory, power analysis, intersectionality studies, urban studies, and global social and environmental justice.

The introduction of biotechnology is part of a global process of structural change in agriculture characterized by an increased integration of world agriculture with high corporate control. However, as the legal competence to allow the planting and trade of genetically modified (GM) crops commonly lies at the level of the nation state, this remains strategic in the politics of GM crops, both for actors promoting the technology and for social movements struggling against it. This paper illustrates this argument with an analysis of the struggles over GM crops in Brazil. It shows how the implementation of a food regime based on biotechnology, corporate control and neoliberal globalism depended on the state and was a contested process.

This book explores the transformation of Brazil and Argentina into two of the world’s largest producers of genetically modified (GM) crops. Systematically comparing their stories in order to explain their paths, differences, ruptures and changes, the author reveals that the emergence of the two nations as leading producers of GM crops cannot be explained by technological superiority of biotechnology; rather, their trajectories are the results of political struggles surrounding agrarian development, in which social movements and the rural poor contested the advancement of biotechnologically-based agrarian models, but have been silenced, ignored, or demobilized by a network of actors in favour of GM crops. Based on rich interview and media material collected amongst activists, the author highlights the importance of political struggles over GM crops not only to debates on agrarian futures and food security, but also as illustrations of the challenges faced by contemporary democracies. An international comparative study, this book raises the question of how social mobilization and rights claims can counter the systemic imperatives of global capitalism and political interests, at a time when regional governments are reliant on commodity booms, whilst globally, governments are obliged to introduce programmes of austerity. As such it will appeal to scholars of sociology, political science and geography with interests in social movements, development, globalization, inequality and political economy.

La introducción de la biotecnología es parte de un proceso global de cambio estructural en la agricultura caracterizado por una cada vez mayor integración de la agricultura mundial con alto control corporativo. Sin embargo, ya que la competencia legal para permitir el cultivo y el comercio de cultivos genéticamente modificados (GM) comúnmente se encuentra a nivel del Estado nacional, éste continúa siendo estratégico en la política de transgénicos tanto para actores promotores de la tecnología como para movimientos sociales que pelean contra ella. El presente artículo ilustra este argumento con un análisis de las luchas acerca de los cultivos transgénicos en Brasil. Se demuestra cómo la implementación de un régimen alimentario basado en biotecnología, control corporativo y globalismo neoliberal dependió del Estado y fue un proceso disputado.

The environment has become a contentious issue in national politics in Brazil. The socioenvironmental effects of the commodification of the economy are now coming to the fore. The deforestation rate in the Amazon has gone up again after a decade of steady decrease; environmental conflicts have increased and intensified; violence in rural areas has deepened in the last decade; and, more recently, shortages of water and energy have plagued urban areas. Although most of these impacts resulted from policies implemented more than a decade ago, they are symptoms of a deeper political problem rooted in anemic levels of democracy, participation, and social justice under the Dilma government. The neodevelopmentalist model—based on expansion of natural resources extraction, large energy and infrastructure projects, and a centralized decision-making process—could hardly have produced a different outcome (Zhouri and Laschefski (2010). In this essay we argue that environmental politics in Brazil has suffered from an increasing distance between the civil society and the state, on one hand, and an increasing distance between rural and urban social movements, on the other. Next, we briefly describe these two processes since Dilma took office in 2011 and consider their implications for her second term, which began in January 2015.

Research on social movement frames has been cumulative. Recently, scholars started studying the structural incentives and constraints for claim-makers by relying on the concept of discursive opportunity structure (DOS) while bringing the public sphere and the media to the centre of analysis of political contention. This article draws on these literatures to investigate social movement campaigns against genetically modified (GM) crops and pesticides in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. First, it argues that there is a transnational DOS that provides structural incentives and constraints to frame risks in symbolic struggles to define GM crops. Next, based on a content analysis of national newspapers, it describes the use of risk frames in national public discourses. Finally, it addresses the question of how this transnationalized DOS is framed by the media by looking at the discursive opportunities for social movements as well as other collective actors in their framing disputes. The study provides evidence of a transnationalization of public debates and offers explanations for national variations by resorting to other components of the DOS such as national policy discourse, timing of political agendas, media structure and culture. It concludes by recognizing the need to consider the various dimensions of opportunity structures for movement action, i.e. political, discursive, and economic, and their relative degree of transnationalization or autonomy over global forces.

O artigo versa sobre a teoria da modernização reflexiva de Ulrich Beck, considerando a sua recente expansão com a tese de uma sociedade global do risco. Dois elementos são analisados: a noção de risco como categoria sociológica e a relação entre os conceitos de modernidade e de reflexividade. Quanto ao primeiro, levanta-se a questão sobre a reivindicada centralidade do conceito "risco" como categoria sociológica e sobre o alcance de uma teoria sociológica sobre risco. Quanto ao segundo, argumenta-se que a teoria de Beck possui as seguintes limitações: uso de explicações causais mecânicas e deterministas para restringir a discussão a sociedades altamente industrializadas; explicações essencialistas sobre a relação entre risco e cultura. Como alternativa, propõem-se cinco premissas para pesquisas sociológicas que sejam aplicáveis a sociedades não europeias, utilizando-se o exemplo de novas tecnologias.

This review provides an overview of social research on genetically modified crops (GM crops), also known as genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Academic inquiry on the social disputes over the future of agriculture biotechnology has multiplied since the mid‐1990s, when the first seeds were approved for market commercialization. This essay identifies and describes five prominent analytical approaches to explain public controversies over GMOs: the political economy of food and agriculture, social studies on science, democracy theory, research on corporations and hegemony, and social movement and peasant studies. This overview concludes by arguing that these different strains, although each privileging one analytical dimension and one level of analysis, converge in (i) the definition of the relevant explanatory factors, (ii) in the identification of the various levels of analysis – global, transnational, national and local – involved in the issue and (iii) in the prognostic that social disputes over GMOs are likely to remain a topic of public and scholar interest in the near future.

Desde la implementación del paquete tecnológico de la soja transgénica y el glifosato en la Argentina en 1996, apenas a partir de 2008 se ha abierto un debate en la agenda pública sobre los efectos del mismo para el país. Este artículo analiza dichas disputas interpretativas desde los medios de comunicación. Observamos para ello las líneas editoriales de la prensa escrita, así como la presencia de actores vinculados a la temática que encuentran en los periódicos plataformas desde las cuales ingresar su posicionamiento en la agenda. Recuperamos las noticias presentes en dos diarios de alcance nacional Página/12 y La Nación, en el período que se sigue a la publicación de un estudio sobre los efectos negativos del glifosato a la salud, en abril 2009. El análisis de contenido muestra que mientras La Nación resalta los beneficios en términos de incremento de la producción y posicionamiento del país en el mercado mundial, Página/12 destaca los efectos negativos sobre el medio ambiente y la salud de los habitantes a partir de la implementación del paquete tecnológico. Con su polarización política, los medios se posicionan como un actor más en la disputa interpretativa y material sobre el modelo sojero en la Argentina.

Este ensaio explora como a América Latina oferece um lócus privilegiado para o cientista social lidar com o desafio epistemológico que é o ajuste entre a teoria e os fatos. O argumento é que, embora se trate de um desafio comum a todos os cientistas sociais, ele se torna mais explícito enquanto tal para o cientista social latino-americano, pois este exerce um ofício cujas formulações teóricas e conceituais foram desenvolvidas em uma tradição de outro tempo e de outro lugar. Ao realizar o ajuste entre estas teorias e estes conceitos e a realidade contemporânea latino-americana, o cientista social latino-americano expande, de forma original, a universalidade da matriz disciplinar das Ciências Sociais.

Esta resenha pretende trazer um pouco dos argumentos recentes da sociologia de risco de Ulrich Beck para o debate brasileiro sobre risco. Em sua recente obra, que poderia ser traduzida em português como Sociedade global de risco: na busca da segurança perdida, o autor se baseia em experiências como o terrorismo global, a ameaça de crise ecológica e as crises financeiras internacionais para defender o conceito de uma sociedade global de risco. Esta se configura em dois momentos: a modernização reflexiva e o momento cosmopolita. A tese é que os perigos fabricados pela sociedade industrial que se tornam evidentes, na sociedade de risco, como resultado da modernização, extrapolam as fronteiras nacionais. Esta resenha repassa os argumentos centrais do livro, dentre os quais destacaria o fim da separação entre realidade objetiva e percepção cultural do risco, cuja realidade residiria no seu caráter controverso; conseqüentemente, a negação do status privilegiado da ciência para avaliar os riscos e a ênfase na figura do desconhecimento e sua relação com a política.

Esta pesquisa parte da problemática das relações entre saúde e comércio internacional para analisar como a Reforma do Estado brasileira em vigilância sanitária na década de 1990, notadamente, a criação da Agência Nacional de Vigilância Sanitária (Anvisa) está relacionada com o avanço do regime multilateral de comércio. Com base na reflexão de Foucault sobre o neoliberalismo, analisou-se como as questões neoliberais de "como" e "até que limite é útil" a intervenção estatal na economia informaram as demandas tanto do mercado internacional como do doméstico sobre as características do desenho institucional adotado.