Relational Intrinsic Value in Women's Grassroots Activism for Food Sovereignty and Climate Justice


Terran Giacomini, Independent Scholar

This paper explores key elements of the politics and practice of specific women and non-binary farmers and peasants in La Via Campesina – a global movement of small-and-medium scale food providers fighting for food sovereignty and agroecology, which they identify as solutions to the extreme social and ecological crises we face. I draw from my PhD research based on participant observation and interview methods as well as nearly two decades of deep engagement in this movement’s activism at multiple scales. Between 2016 and 2021, I interviewed nineteen women and one non-binary activist from thirteen countries, carrying out the research at four international meetings and conferences. I selected participants who share a politics that is critical of relations of exploitation and oppression and based on far-reaching life-affirming alternatives. The research aims to throw light on the importance of women’s contributions to movements seeking deep transformations in systemic power relations. Drawing on literatures from feminist, ecological, Marxist, anti-colonial and anti-racist scholars, I show that some of the most visionary and transformative politics for social and environmental justice is focused on building relationships with one another and the non-human world. Relationships are at the heart of the participants’ practice in all areas of their lives – with their families, their communities, on the land and in their movements. This deep and defining focus on relationships is a manifestation of a politics grounded in intrinsic value. Following Kovel (2007) I understand intrinsic value as the value we assign to nature, ourselves and others, including nonhumans, that honours the web of life and the interdependence that sustains us. In their rich and varied emphasis on relationship the participants in my study implicitly expressed a politics based on relational intrinsic value – the value underpinning our abilities to create, defend and delight in the connections we always already have and build new ones with one another and nature. This paper sheds significant new light on both transformative politics and intrinsic value. Transformative politics grounded in relational intrinsic value not only requires resistance to markets and commodification but the defense and affirmation of ancient and Indigenous cosmovisions and feminist care economies that prioritize cooperation and solidarity. In this time of crisis, when the commodification of everything is deepening power divisions and significantly undermining the existence of humanity and many other species, this relational politics is showing what changes are important and necessary to healing our world.

This paper will be presented at the following session: