Diverse Citizenship? Food Sovereignty and the Power of Acting Otherwise

Abstract

This contribution discusses two different but interlinked fields of research: political theories of sovereignty and citizenship, as well as conceptualizations of emerging alternative food movements. In drawing on James Tully's practiced-based understanding of 'diverse citizenship', as well as on other selected theories of postmodern political thought, it focuses on the contested political nature of the food sovereignty movement, specifically with regard to the dynamics and actions that have brought it into being. In doing so, it conceives of citizenship as materializing on the basis of multi-faceted practices of 'acting otherwise', which stands in sharp contrast to a conceptualization of citizenship as an institutionalized status, as it is understood in the liberal tradition. In order to deepen and to sharpen this alternative approach, this contribution additionally draws on Theodore Schatzki's practice theory, which, despite its rather apolitical character, makes it possible to conceive of political practices as emergent and situational phenomena that are closely connected to the quotidian practices of everyday life. The combination of these perspectives bears great potential for theoretical discussions on alternative food movements as well as for their empirical investigation, since it puts emphasis on the way how practitioners and advocates for food sovereignty disclose themselves in multifaceted struggles over the imposition and the challenging of the rules of social living together.

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social sciences
Article
Diverse Citizenship? Food Sovereignty and the Power
of Acting Otherwise
Benno Fladvad
Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies “Futures of Sustainability”, University of Hamburg,
Gorch-Fock-Wall 5-7, 20354 Hamburg, Germany; benno.fladvad@uni-hamburg.de
Received: 30 September 2019; Accepted: 9 December 2019; Published: 13 December 2019


Abstract:
This contribution discusses two different but interlinked fields of research: political theories
of sovereignty and citizenship, as well as conceptualizations of emerging alternative food movements.
In drawing on James Tully’s practiced-based understanding of ‘diverse citizenship’, as well as on other
selected theories of postmodern political thought, it focuses on the contested political nature of the
food sovereignty movement, specifically with regard to the dynamics and actions that have brought
it into being. In doing so, it conceives of citizenship as materializing on the basis of multi-faceted
practices of ‘acting otherwise’, which stands in sharp contrast to a conceptualization of citizenship
as an institutionalized status, as it is understood in the liberal tradition. In order to deepen and
to sharpen this alternative approach, this contribution additionally draws on Theodore Schatzki’s
practice theory, which, despite its rather apolitical character, makes it possible to conceive of political
practices as emergent and situational phenomena that are closely connected to the quotidian practices
of everyday life. The combination of these perspectives bears great potential for theoretical discussions
on alternative food movements as well as for their empirical investigation, since it puts emphasis on
the way how practitioners and advocates for food sovereignty disclose themselves in multifaceted
struggles over the imposition and the challenging of the rules of social living together.
Keywords: food sovereignty; post-national citizenship; sovereignty; justice; practice theory
1. Introduction
In March 2017, the German peasant foundation “Haus der Bauern” organized a noteworthy
international congress, named “Global Peasants’ Rights”, in Schwäbisch Hall in Southwest Germany.
During the four-day conference, the participants—mostly small-scale farmers of various kinds and from
various regions worldwide, as well as NGO-representatives, politicians, and scientists—developed
a much-noted UN-declaration on the fundamental rights for peasants
1
. The objective of this charter,
named the “Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas”, is to protect peasants
(and associated groups) from poverty, malnutrition, marginalization, expropriation and, in general,
from a weakening of their sovereignty, which is, according to their view, seriously threatened by
multinational corporations and state power. In doing so, the declaration redefines existing human
rights, such as the right to the freedom of thought and opinion, according to the realities of peasant
communities. Moreover, it also positions new rights on the global political agenda, most importantly
1
The author of this article attended this congress and conducted participant observations, e.g., within workshop
discussions. The foundation “Haus der Bauern” is the political branch of the regional farmers association “Bäuerliche
Erzeugergemeinschaft Schwäbisch Hall” (see https://www.hdb-stiftung.com/index.php/de/; accessed on 27 November 2019).
Detailed information on the congress “Global Peasants’ Rights” as well as on the declaration on the “Rights of Peasants and
Other People Working in Rural Areas” can be found under: http://www.global-peasants-rights.com/index.php/en/(accessed
on 27 November 2019).
Soc. Sci. 2019,8, 331; doi:10.3390/socsci8120331 www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci

Soc. Sci. 2019,8, 331 2 of 16
the right to food sovereignty (FS)—a truly transformative claim that was developed and disseminated
during the last 25 years by the transnational peasant movement La Vía Campesina.
The congress in Schwäbisch Hall is thus not a singular event, neither is it focused on German or
European peasants’ interests alone. It is rather embedded within two antagonist but yet interrelated
trajectories in relation to the production, consumption and distribution of food on the global scale.
On the one hand, we witness the consolidation of a ‘corporate food regime’ that builds on a capitalist
world economy and which goes along with an industrialized corporate agriculture, with an undermining
of small-scale agriculture as well as with multiple environmental and social crises (Brand and Wissen
2017;McMichael 2009a;McMichael 2014). On the other hand, both in the Global North and South,
grassroots movements, such as small scale farmers, consumer movements and indigenous peoples
rally around the claim for FS and call for the just distribution of food, land and resources, for cultural
recognition, as well for the political representation of their identities (Andr
é
e et al. 2014;Desmarais
2007;Patel 2009;Wittman 2009).
In view of these two trajectories, it certainly would be scientifically relevant to focus on the
juridical integration of the charter of Schwäbisch Hall into the global ‘legal infrastructure’ (Hadfield
2017, p. 3) as well as to analyze the possible formation of new political discourses around food.
However, my intentions in this contribution are somewhat different; in drawing on James Tully’s (2014)
practiced-based notion of ‘diverse citizenship’, as well as on other selected theories of postmodern
political thought, I rather want to focus on the contested political nature of the FS movement, specifically
with regard to the dynamics and actions that have brought it (and thus the charter of Schwäbisch
Hall) into being. In particular, I want to investigate the paradox that, on the one hand, we apparently
witness a politically coherent community that declares a new global legal framework for the benefit of
the peasantry and which draws on the notion of sovereignty—a concept that is historically inextricably
interwoven with the image of the state. On the other hand, however, this community does apparently
not rest on a ‘classical’ common foundational ground such as a shared territorial space, a common
cultural heritage, a founding myth, or an ethnic identity. In other words, their foundational frame of
reference remains rather vague and contingent. In view of this apparent political ‘groundlessness’
2
one
might therefore ask: What in particular is it that ties these groups together? What has brought them
into being? And on what kind of foundational grounding are their claims being built and legitimized?
As a response to these questions, I will argue in this contribution that the ‘foundational backbone’
of the right to food sovereignty (as well as of the political community that struggles for it) derives
from and is embedded within political action itself. However, in this case, political action is to a lesser
extent understood as symbolic and discursive practices such as campaigning, marching, lobbying and
the like (however important these might be); I am rather referring to an amalgam of a high variety of
interlinked food practices “through which the peasantry constitutes itself as distinctively different” (van
der Ploeg 2008, p. 265, emphasis in original), such as agro-ecological cultivation methods, seed saving
practices, direct marketing or subsistence farming. This rather unconventional focus on political action,
however, also requires examining what it actually means to act politically, i.e., to investigate what,
in detail, qualifies political practices as such, in the sense of having transformative agency and the
power to change societal orders. I will therefore draw on insights from political theory and social
theory and show how far political practices may contribute to the forming and the consolidation of
a post-national political community of ‘diverse citizens’.
2
I am referring here to the notion of political ‘groundlessness’ that is discussed by several post-foundational thinkers, e.g.,
Chantal Mouffe(2007), as a fundamental and ontological condition of politics. This assumption is mostly associated with
Heideggerian thought and the divide between the ontic dimension of ‘politics’ and the ontological dimension of ‘the
political’. Other post-foundational thinkers such as Bonnie Honig (2009) draw on the Rousseauvian ‘paradox of politics’,
which she interprets as a ‘hen-and-egg problematic’ between ‘good citizens’ that shape ‘good law’ and ‘good law’ that
shapes ‘good citizens’. In contrast to anti-foundational thought, post-foundational thought does not presuppose the absence
of any foundational political ground but rather points to its contingent nature (see also Marchart 2007).

Soc. Sci. 2019,8, 331 3 of 16
These objectives are motivated by two aspirations. On the one hand, I want to contribute to
the literature which seeks to theorize the notion of sovereignty in relation to food (Edelman 2014;
Menser 2014;Patel 2009;Trauger 2014). These insights will thus help us to understand in more
detail why the respective movements rest on this universal ideal and how far it contributes to the
forming of coherent and powerful post-national political communities. On the other hand, I want to
discuss an alternative understanding of political action that is highly compatible with and inspired by
Tully’s notion of ‘diverse citizenship’, since it does not take political practices as preexisting categories,
but conceptualizes them as contingent, emergent and situational, i.e., as being highly dependent on
the questions how, why and in what kind of context they are being exercised.
This contribution is divided into four sections. In the following part I, will put a focus on the
recent and intensifying re-politicization of food, which includes the discussion of the origin and the
normative contents of the emerging claim for FS as well as related literature on ‘alternative food
networks’. In section three, I will discuss selected postmodern theories on sovereignty and justice,
which will help to understand why practitioners of and advocates for FS build on these universal
concepts and how far they contribute to the forming of a heterogeneous, but yet coherent political
community. In section four, I will combine Tully’s notion of ‘diverse citizenship’, with Theodore
Schatzki’s practice theory. This combination, I argue, bears great potential for analyzing the emergence
and multifaceted democratization processes of transnational grassroots movements, since it not only
offers insights into the internal organization of social practices but also into their interconnection and
spatial materialization (see also Jonas 2017). Finally, in section five, I will synthesize my arguments in
pointing out certain aspects that will enrich discussions on contemporary food movements, as well as
on the changing nature of (environmental) citizenship.
2. On the Re-Politicization of Food
Food is without doubt one of the most important domains of our everyday lives. It is not only
a basic need or a cultural, economic, and ecological issue but also a highly contested political subject.
However, especially this last aspect has often been overseen or actively concealed in the past
3
. In this
section I will thus put a focus on the recent re-politicization of food in discussing the origin and the
content of the claim for FS as well as associated literature on ‘alternative food networks’.
2.1. The Claim for Food Sovereignty
The claim for FS represents an explicit critique of and a counter-movement to the globalized
world economy of food that McMichael and Friedmann conceptualize as the ‘corporate food regime’
(Friedmann 1993;Friedmann and McMichael 1989;McMichael 2005;McMichael 2009a). According to
the authors
4
, this regime has been shaped during the neoliberal era, especially during the Uruguay
Round (1986–1994), and refers to the production, consumption and distribution of food on a world
scale, characterized by capital-intensive modes of production, free trade arrangements, an international
division of labor, an oligopoly of transnational corporations, the hegemony of financial markets as well
as by diverse forms of capital accumulation, and a general detachment of food from cultural identities
(see also Campbell 2009 and van der Ploeg 2008 for similar approaches and conclusions). Additionally,
it goes along with several moments of crisis and an ‘imperial mode of living’ that rests on capitalist
3
I am basically referring here to the idea of food security that is often criticized for being rather a technical than a political
concept. Scholars from various disciplines have shown that food security often goes along with and enables neoliberal
policies and developmentalist discourses. Thereby it does not challenge the predominant growth oriented, corporate and
globalized world economy of food (Jarosz 2014;Hopma and Woods 2014;McMichael 2005;Menser 2014;Patel 2009).
4
Although Friedmann and McMichael basically developed corresponding arguments, they also disagree about some aspects
of their theory. In particular, they do not necessarily agree about the current existence of such a regime as a firmly established
set of rules.

Soc. Sci. 2019,8, 331 4 of 16
production and consumption patterns and on the overexploitation of natural resources (Brand and
Wissen 2017).
Even though several movements from the Global North draw on the FS-discourse and contributed
significantly in its formation (Jarosz 2014), it is very often associated with rural contexts of the Global
South
5
. In particular, the transnational peasant movement La V
í
a Campesina plays a pivotal role in its
dissemination and formation, since it ties together several movements and groups, predominantly
from Latin America and South East Asia, such as peasants, indigenous peoples, small-scale farmers,
pastoralists and consumer movements (Desmarais 2007;Mart
í
nez-Torres and Rosset 2010). The most
common definition of FS states that:
“Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced
through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own
food and agriculture systems. It puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce,
distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the
demands of markets and corporations. [
. . .
] It ensures that the rights to use and manage
lands, territories, waters, seeds, livestock and biodiversity are in the hands of those of us
who produce food.” (La Vía Campesina 2007)
What becomes most obvious here is that FS is being claimed as a universal human right that incorporates
several individual claims such as the right to land, water and seeds but also the recognition of those
who produce food (Claeys 2012;Edelman et al. 2014;Patel 2009). This rather vague definition has led
Edelman (2014, p. 960f.) to label FS as a “free-floating signifier filled with varying kind of content”.
Patel (2013) analogously speaks of a ‘signifier on the move’ and of a ‘big tent’, within which “disparate
groups can recognise themselves in the enunciation of a particular programme” (Patel 2009, p. 666).
However, this openness does not imply that FS has no meaning; an essential focus lies on the right to
land, agro-ecology, self-determined modes of production as well as on the cultural and legal recognition
of small-scale farmers and indigenous identities. This emphasis on redistributive issues and questions
of identity politics is not only related to the historical fact of colonialist exploitation of large parts of the
Global South and to the political relevance of questions on land reform, in particular in Latin America
(Teubal 2009), but also to the circumstance that the recent financial crisis had far-reaching effects on
peasant and indigenous communities in many regions of the world (Desmarais 2007;Mart
í
nez-Torres
and Rosset 2010;McMichael 2009b;McMichael 2014;Rosset 2008).
Furthermore, as noted above, it is most remarkable that the idea of FS essentially builds on
the notion of sovereignty—a key concept of modern political thought that is, at least historically,
inextricably tied to the idea of the nation-state (see e.g., Skinner 2010). This obvious paradox becomes
even clearer in view of the fact that at the heart of the idea of FS lie the claim and the aspiration to
displace any sovereign territorial entity or ‘top down’ exercise of power. In doing so, it rather points to
the multi-faceted power-hierarchies of the global world economy (Patel 2009) and draws on discourses
of anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, global solidarity and global justice (Hopma and Woods 2014),
which may be seen as antitheses and counterparts to the idea of sovereignty, understood as the highest
and absolute authority.
In sum, we can see that the claim for FS is not only about re-appropriating land; beyond its
manifold internal contradictions and tensions (see e.g., Agarwal 2014;Bernstein 2014;Edelman et al.
2014), it rather represents a “mobilizing frame for social movements, a set of legal and quasi-legal
norms and practices” (Edelman 2014, p. 959), and therefore serves as a normative guideline for political
action. However, when it comes to the question of how FS is being enacted in practice, the respective
5
Parallel to these developments, several movements, in particular in urban contexts in the Global North, raise claims for
food justice and food democracy, which are closely related to the ideas and demands of the FS movement, although they
are connected to a rather moderate, but yet progressive political discourse (Andr
é
e et al. 2014;Cadieux and Slocum 2015;
Holt Giménez and Shattuck 2011;Lang 2007).

Soc. Sci. 2019,8, 331 5 of 16
literature does not (or at least to a lesser extent) highlight conventional political practices such as
lobbying, protesting, negotiating; instead, it rather points to a variety of ‘alternative food networks’
and spaces, such as agro-ecological farming, community supported agriculture, seed saving initiatives,
guerilla gardening or direct marketing initiatives (see e.g., Trauger 2014;Wright 2014). In the following
section, I will briefly discuss these ‘alternative food networks’, since they represent a common way to
conceptualize FS in practice, as well as their analytical limitations.
2.2. Alternative Food Networks
According to Renting et al. (2003, p. 394), the concept of ‘alternative food networks’ (AFN)
can be broadly defined as “newly emerging networks of producers, consumers, and other actors
that embody alternatives to the more standardised industrial mode of food supply”. AFN are thus
generally characterized by short, transparent and value-based food supply chains that on the one
hand break with the complexity and invisibility of industrialized supply chains, and, on the other,
they aim at allowing consumers to make their own judgments about the quality of food based on
their own knowledge and experiences, as well as on new images around food (ibid.). In doing so,
AFNs are essentially characterized by “their capacity to resocialise or respatialise” (Renting et al. 2003,
p. 398) consumer-producer relationships with the objective of reconnecting food to its places of origin,
to ‘nature’ as well as to its intrinsic values that are closely related to the questions of where, how and
under which circumstances food is being produced (see also Goodman et al. 2012;Maye et al. 2007;
Rosol 2018;Watts et al. 2005;Whatmore and Thorne 1997;Winter 2003a).
An important and controversially debated question within discussion on AFN is the character of
their alterity. Watts et al. (2005) provide a useful classification in differentiating AFNs in ‘alternative
products’ such as organic and regional products, alternative networks, such as urban gardening or
direct marketing initiatives, and alternative economies, such as cooperatives, community supported
agriculture projects and other forms of solidarity economics. However, empirically it is rather the case
that these three forms of alterity intermingle (Rosol 2018). Additionally, due the growing interest of large
retailers in organic or fair-trade products, as well as the connection of alternative food supply chains with
conventional ones, it has become common sense that the divide between alternative and conventional
becomes increasingly vague (Ilbery and Maye 2005). Thus, in recent years respective research has moved
away from binary thinking, e.g., alternative/conventional or capitalist/non-capitalist dichotomies,
and rather pleads for a relational and post-binary conceptualization of alternative economic spaces
(Hillebrand and Zademach 2013).
In sum, the AFN-approach reveals valuable insights into the multi-faceted spatial and practical
dimension of alternative economical networks and spaces. However, its explanatory power and
analytical scope with regard to the political dimension of FS remains limited, in particular due to two
aspects. Firstly, the engagement with normative and political questions, e.g., in terms of sovereignty,
justice and citizenship, remains rather vague within the AFN-perspective. This shortcoming is basically
related to the fact that, as Renting et al. (2012, p. 291) state, the AFN-approach “has no clear normative
content of its own, since it is ultimately defined in terms of its distinction from ‘mainstream’ food
networks”. The delimitation of AFN from “the logic of bulk commodity production” (Whatmore
et al. 2003, p. 389), does therefore not serve as a basic normative principle, in particular, since the
divide between alternative and conventional is not static but a “highly contested terrain” (Goodman
and Goodman 2009, p. 2). Secondly, AFN-conceptualizations are often criticized for a ‘defensive’
(Winter 2003b) or ‘normative localism’ (Goodman et al. 2012, p. 11), which means that the emphasis
on and the privileged treatment of the local scale—e.g., in the form of local food systems, one of the
key ideas of FS—leads to an idealization and delimitation of local relationships vis-
à
-vis ‘the outside’.
Such a normative and moralized understanding of place, as being inherently ‘good’, therefore, neglects
that local economies are neither pre-given, nor necessarily more sustainable or more just, e.g., in terms
of CO
2
emissions or wage labor. Born and Purcell (2006) accordingly speak of a ‘local trap’, and thereby
highlight that injustices and ecological damages in relation to food happen on various scales and are

Soc. Sci. 2019,8, 331 6 of 16
also the outcomes of local decision-making processes. In addition, they argue that a privileging of the
local scale might lead to a neglect of necessary political decisions and transformation on other scales.
In view of these shortcomings, it becomes clear the AFN-concept is important to conceptualize the
spatial, practical and economical dynamics of alternative food movements. However, it is insufficient
to understand the political dimension of FS, in particular with regard to its foundation. Therefore, it is
important to reflect more deeply on respective theories of sovereignty, justice and citizenship, which I
will do in the following two sections.
3. Sovereignty and the Politics of Representation
As noted above, the idea of FS seems paradoxical, since, on the one hand, it discursively draws
on the idea of sovereignty as a guiding principle for their political action, and, on the other hand,
it displaces the state or any other territorial entity, which could serve as a foundational and material
basis for its normative principles. Therefore, it is useful to approach sovereignty in a first step from
a postmodern perspective, in order to deconstruct its meaning as ‘highest and absolute authority’.
However, since the idea of sovereignty does not answer the question as to why most heterogeneous
movements unite to a politically coherent community, it makes sense, in a second step, to engage with
the normative dimension of ‘the political’, i.e., with a theory of justice.
3.1. Approaching Sovereignty from a Postmodern Perspective
Historically, the idea of sovereignty, i.e., the idea of paramount and untouchable authority,
is inextricably bound to the idea of the nation-state (Skinner 2010). However, in the course of the
processes and dynamics of globalization, it has become obvious that the image of the state as the only
and unchallenged bearer of sovereignty has eroded (Fraser 2008;Agnew 2009). Interestingly, despite
these developments, in political theory and political geography discussion about sovereignty persist
(Kalmo and Skinner 2010;Mountz 2013). In particular, the influences of postmodern thinking underline
the fragmentation and contestability of sovereign power, e.g., in relation to spaces of neoliberalism (Ong
2006), to US-exceptionalism (Gregory 2006), or to the politics and geographies of social movements
(Nicholls 2007).
This fragmented nature of sovereignty is perfectly mirrored in Derrida’s work, who argues that
“in politics the choice is not between sovereignty and nonsovereignty, but among several forms of
partings, partitions, divisions, conditions that come along to broach a sovereignty” (Derrida
[
2001
]
2009, p. 76ff). In consequence, this means that the idea of sovereignty as the highest authority and
unity is neither given nor absolute, but that sovereign power is highly contested, even if it seems
untouchable as an inviolable natural law. Similarly, Gratton (2012) argues that one of the basic features
of sovereignty is its fictional character, which essentially rests on histories, narrations and myths,
which ‘the sovereign’ tells about itself. This, however, does not mean that sovereign power is not a real
force, in the sense of e.g., military or economic power, or that sovereignty is not spatially effective.
On the contrary, it is exactly the symbolic, ideological dimension of sovereignty, i.e., its ‘apparition’
(Baranger 2010), out of which ‘the sovereign’ derives its alleged unquestionability and through which
territorial and material manifestations of sovereignty are made possible (Elden 2010).
In the light of these approaches it becomes thus clear that the transnational movement for
FS—which often legitimizes its claims with the mystification of small-holders and indigenous peoples
as the genuine producers of food, and who are willing to feed the worlds’ people (La Vía Campesina
2007)—essentially uses the ideological dimension of sovereignty as a discursive and strategic tool
in order to regain autonomy and control over territory in relation to oppressive forces of both state
power and market forces (Trauger 2014). In this sense, the idea of sovereignty functions as a territorial
strategy to obtain maximal self-determination and as a political program for non-state actors that
is combined with certain norms and values such as non-interference, inclusiveness, plurality and
sustainability (Menser 2014). As Koskenniemi (2010, p. 232) puts it, sovereignty thus becomes “a moral
principle, a polemical weapon [and] part of a political vocabulary whose point is not to register aspects

Soc. Sci. 2019,8, 331 7 of 16
of the world but to achieve them: to preserve or change a status quo, to support or oppose particular
contestants”.
However, when it comes to the questions as to why most heterogeneous groups unite to
post-national political communities, on which commonly shared ‘ground’ they are being founded,
and how this idea derives democratic legitimacy, a further engagement with theories of sovereignty
does not seem helpful. What rather might seem of worth here is an engagement with a normative
theory of ‘the political’, i.e., a theory of justice, which is provided by deliberative political theorist
Nancy Fraser.
3.2. Justice and the Politics of Representation
In her work, Fraser focuses on the content, the spatial framing and the legitimacy of justice,
which she conceptualizes as a three-dimensional theory of analytically distinct but inseparably
interlinked spheres of economic redistribution, cultural recognition and political representation (see,
in particular, Fraser 2005;Fraser 2008). I will not discuss the first two dimensions of justice in detail
here (however important they are), since it would extend the scope of this contribution. Rather,
for my purposes, the last sphere, the dimension of political representation, seems to be of particular
interest, since it is closely connected to the question of citizenship, i.e., of belonging to a democratically
legitimized (and itself legitimizing) political community.
According to Fraser, the politics of representation refers not only to seeking a remedy to the
‘ordinary’ constellations of misrepresentation which occur, e.g., in cases of malfunctioning electoral
systems; it also refers to cases in which certain people or groups are excluded at all times from the
possibility of raising their voice, of acting and participating as peers in a clearly defined political
community. Accordingly, Fraser (2005, p. 15ff) speaks in these cases of ‘meta-political injustices’,
since globalization has engendered a variety of structures and forces that lead to certain forms of
suppression and marginalization and which cannot be traced back to the framing of the nation-state.
In these cases, Fraser argues, “globalization is driving a widening wedge between state territoriality
and social effectivity” (ibid., p. 14), which means that, in times of globalization, emancipatory forces
neither address their claims to the state, nor do they negotiate and practice their claims exclusively on
the local scale; they rather seek and create new post-national democratic fora and spaces, such as La
V
í
a Campesina gatherings—as it was the case in Schwäbisch Hall—or the World Social Forum, in order
to make their agency visible and to addresses their particular claims to the trans- and international
political sphere.
However, if it is neither the state nor any other economical or cultural category, such as class,
gender or ethnicity, that “turns a collection of people into fellow subjects of justice” (ibid., p. 13ff),
the question still remains to what principle these emancipatory movements refer, in order to recognize
themselves as legitimate subjects of justice. In view of this question, Fraser suggests orientating the
legitimacy of transnational justice claims towards the principle of ‘all-affectedness’, which points to the
idea that political decisions, institutions and structures are only legitimate, if those who are affected by
them have a fair and equal chance to participate in their formation. Therewith, this principle holds
that the establishment of a public opinion that might influence political decisions (e.g., about food and
agrarian policies) is only legitimate, if it has been developed within a freely accessible political space
and a communicative process, within which affected groups can participate as peers, regardless of
their cultural or ethnic identity, class membership or nationality. In doing so, the ‘all-affected principle’
serves as Barnett (2012, p. 682) argues, as “an animating political intuition, as a worldly normative force,
creating political claims and counter-claims”. Therefore, although the ‘all-affected principle’ does not
explain how diverse groups are being differentially affected by the corporate food regime—admittedly
one of the weaknesses of the idea—it morally legitimizes and animates the struggles for FS and unites
diverse groups into a coherent political emancipatory community of post-national citizens.
Exactly this kind of transnational emancipatory politics is being enacted by practitioners and
advocates of FS. As, for example, Wittman (2009) shows, peasants that unite around the idea of FS,

Soc. Sci. 2019,8, 331 8 of 16
essentially build on an enhancement as well as on a deepening of their political representation in global
political struggles around food. However, they do not only do so in the form of increasing their public
visibility, in terms of attending, e.g., the World Social Forum or UN-conferences; they rather do so
in practically reworking the disrupted human–nature relationship, i.e., in the form of multifaceted
agro-ecological practices or seed saving initiatives. Thus, the foundational ‘ground’ of the claim for FS,
cannot be explaining by applying the ‘all-affected-principle’ alone. Beyond that, as I will argue in the
next section, a focus on the practical dimension of ‘the political’ is of utmost importance.
4. Diverse Citizenship or the Power of ‘Acting Otherwise’
As noted in the introduction, Tully’s notion of ‘diverse citizenship’, in particular in combination
with Schatzki’s ‘site ontology’, bears great potential for analyzing the emergence and multifaceted
democratization processes of transnational grassroots movements. In this section I will show why this
is the case. Therefore, I will firstly discuss Tully’s approach, and, secondly, I will introduce Schatzki’s
practice theory, which allows to analytically deepen and to sharpen the former.
4.1. Modern Citizenship vs. Diverse Citzenship
The conventional understanding of citizenship, which is often termed ‘modern citizenship’ or
‘liberal citizenship’, is generally defined as an institutionalized status of belonging to a certain political
and social community (i.e., the nation-state), as well as of being entitled to a set of certain rights and
obligations (Isin and Turner 2007). Modern citizenship is therefore synonymous to the condition of
being subject to the constitutional laws, rights and responsibilities—an understanding which has been
subject to various criticisms, in particular due to the dynamics of globalization.
Nevertheless, globalization apparently did not lead to a withering away of the nation-state,
nor did it lead to a fundamentally different understanding of citizenship. What has happened, however,
is the dissemination of the idea of ‘modern citizenship’ around the globe. On the one hand, it led to
an adoption of the Western idea of statehood and its underlying institutions in other parts of the world
(which in fact already started during the epoch of imperialism), and, on the other, it took shape as
a cosmopolitan understanding of citizenship, which is best mirrored in recent debates around global
governance and cosmopolitan democracy (Brodie 2004;Held et al. 1999). Therefore, globalization has
indeed engendered a new form and a new framing of citizenship; nevertheless, this new shape did
not change the idea of citizenship as such, i.e., as an institutionalized and universal status of being
entitled to certain rights and duties that are being exercised and practiced via certain institutions of
cosmopolitan democracy (Tully 2014).
In recent years, however, a new and rather critical understanding of citizenship has emerged
that radically questions the understanding of this concept as a formalized legal and political status
and which rather highlights the emancipatory power of certain acts, deeds and events through which
citizens disclose themselves as political subjects. In particular, the work of Isin and Nielsen (2008)
shows in how far citizens are not passive ‘objects of the law’, but rather active agents of the law
itself, which means that they actively contribute in shaping and forming of political communities
and political subjectivities. In view of this different understanding of citizenship, it is no surprise
that in recent years several ‘adjectival citizenships’ such as environmental citizenship, ecological
citizenship, or consumer citizenship have emerged (Bell 2005). Accordingly, citizenship is not any
longer understood as membership to the state, but rather embedded in high variety of different social
contexts and practices, from the ‘bottom up’.
Tully’s (2014) notion of ‘diverse citizenship’ comes very close to this understanding, although it
still reveals some peculiarities, which are best understood in reviewing his earlier work on the “agonic
freedom of citizens” (Tully 1999). Instead of investigating political institutions, modes of governance
or great political theories, Tully therein suggests looking at the concrete appearances and activities
of ‘the political’ itself. In doing so, he compares civic action with a game-like activity that underlies
certain more or less binding but unfixed rules, and which is played out between mutually recognizing

Soc. Sci. 2019,8, 331 9 of 16
citizens with different viewpoints on their shared world. In doing so, he discusses the introduction of
new or modified practices into the public sphere (i.e., ‘the game’) and their maintenance over time by
‘new players’ such as emerging social movements. This practice, according to Tully, may be called
‘practice of freedom’, since on the one hand it implies the freedom of resisting hegemonic practices of
governance, and, on the other—in virtue of engaging in these activities—it represents the basis for
political subjects to take on an identity as free citizens. Thus, what makes this perspective particularly
interesting for an investigation of the practical dimensions of emerging political communities, is that
political activity and thus the formation of citizenship is not referred to a radical “rupture in the given”
(Isin 2008, p. 25), nor is it a “matter of the will or the intellect, or of background constitutions, laws and
rights” (Tully 1999, p. 162); it rather refers to the power of “speaking and acting differently”, i.e., to the
power of routinely exercised social practices that prefiguratively aim at “modifying the rules or even
transforming the [political] game itself” (ibid., p. 164).
This practiced-based approach to ‘the political’ becomes even clearer in Tully’s recent work on
‘diverse citizenship’:
“Rather than looking on citizenship as a status within an institutional framework backed up
by world-historical processes and universal norms, the diverse tradition looks on citizenship
as negotiated practices, as praxis—as actors and activities in contexts.” (Tully 2014, p. 35)
Therefore, as Tully argues, ‘diverse citizenship’ stands in sharp contrast to the notion of ‘modern or
liberal citizenship’, which presupposes that activities are subordinate and of secondary importance
in contrast to the “conditions of civilization” (ibid.), i.e., to the universal and institutionalized rights,
rules and institutions of modernity and liberalism. It thus highlights the power of multi-faceted and
variegated civic activities from the ‘bottom up’ and their potential for the forming of political identities.
To be more precise, this does not mean that civic actions merely constitute a form of citizenship, since
this would imply that there exists a pre-political, institutionalized frame of reference, within which
these practices are exercised. Instead, Tully rather highlights that political practices in themselves are the
very entities out of which a polis, emerges. Different forms of institutionalization, e.g., the self-governed
formation of social movements, can thus be the result of the practices of ‘acting otherwise’, but they
are secondary. The primary thing is the activity itself. Likewise, it also becomes clear that the question
of in- and exclusion of ‘diverse citizenship’ does not depend on formalized membership but emerges
only in virtue of the actual doing. ‘Diverse citizenship’ is thus not only practice-based but also a highly
relational concept, since it is oriented towards situational contexts of people’s action together ‘in
concert’. As a result, it has to be treated as a spatially ‘flat’ concept, which means that the political
frame of reference of ‘diverse citizens’ is simultaneously local and global and thus avoids hierarchically
sub- or superordinate scales (ibid., p. 73ff).
4.2. Social Practices as Entry Points into the Political
However, if we are to follow Tully’s suggestion to look exclusively at the actual practices of ‘the
political’, we are soon (at least when doing ethnographic research) confronted with a fundamental
epistemological challenge. In fact, if social practices are the entry points through which the political
dimension of social life should be investigated and if we do not conceptualize them as pre-existing
categories but as situational emergent properties of the social (see also Swyngedouw 2011), the question
arises as to how we recognize political practices as such and separate them from apolitical ones.
A possible way to conceptualize this separation is to draw on the practice theory of Theodore Schatzki.
According to Schatzki (2002), social life consists of, is realized through and manifests in commonly
shared social practices, unfolding in the form of ‘doings and sayings’, and material arrangements, i.e.,
orders, artefacts and different sorts of materiality. The separation between practices and arrangements,
however, is purely analytical; empirically, they appear as inseparable ‘practice-arrangement-bundles’
that are interconnected with other ‘practice-arrangement-bundles’, such as sowing seeds, harvesting
agricultural produce and cooking or selling food. In consequence, social practices are embedded in

Soc. Sci. 2019,8, 331 10 of 16
and form a more or less complex and horizontally extending mesh of social practices and material
arrangements. Similar to Tully’s understanding of ‘the political’, the spatial categories of scales or any
other type of vertical thinking are thus not compatible with the ‘site ontology’. Schatzki (2016) instead
claims that there is only one, or rather, no scale within which social life manifests (see also Marston et
al. 2005).
Furthermore, there exist four organizing components that give social practices their meaning and
which make them distinguishable and recognizable. These are: (1) the ‘practical understanding’, i.e.,
the knowing how to do something; (2) ‘rules’, which are more or less formalized instructions on how
and under which circumstances a certain practice ought to be enacted; (3) ‘teleo-affective structures’,
which entail both a teleological or intentional, as well as an emotional and affective dimension, such as
satisfaction of needs, joy or fear; and (4) ‘general understandings’ or teleo-affective regimes, understood
as overarching normative principles, such as shared values that organize not only one but various
social practices (Schatzki 1996, p. 89).
Although social practices are not static but highly dynamic, Schatzki (2002) does not claim to
provide a theory which explains why social change occurs. ‘The political’ is thus not treated as a distinct
or exclusive realm of social life, rather social practices are ontologically of the same kind, which means
that social change does not derive from entities outside social practices but that it is triggered by
the prefigurative power that current practices exert on their feature enactment (Schatzki 2002, p. 62).
However, keeping in mind Tully’s account of the ‘practices of freedom’, it actually is possible to separate
political practices from apolitical ones, not in ontological terms, but according to their organization: As
soon as certain practices (e.g., cooking, producing or eating food) are exercised, not only according to
the ‘teleo-affective’ structure of satisfying hunger or of selling it in order to make a living, but also
with the aim and the ambition of ‘modifying the rules’ of the respective practice, we can assume that
these practice are fundamentally different since they reveal a double character in the Arendtian sense
6
.
On the one hand, they may be characterized as ‘labor’, i.e., as practices that serve to sustain life and
that fulfil basic needs. On the other, they represent ‘action’ or rather ‘speech and action’, which Tully
interprets as ‘practices of freedom’, and which aim, in a self-referential manner, i.e., in virtue of
their exercise, at modifying their own rules (Dünckmann and Fladvad 2016;Fladvad and Glöckler
forthcoming). The exercise of these ‘prefigurative practices’ (Swain 2019, p. 48), however, should not
to be understood as single events that are detached from overarching, in Schatzki’s words, ‘general
understandings’ or ‘teleo-affective-regimes’. On the contrary, they always are connected to other social
or political practices such as, e.g., campaigning or engaging in negotiations for FS, as exemplified in
Schwäbisch Hall.
In sum, Schatzki’s practice theory makes it possible to deepen Tully’s account of ‘diverse
citizenship’, since it enables researchers to analyze social practices according to their internal
organization as well as to their situational, material and spatial embedding. Moreover, it allows
us to analytically distinguish political practices from apolitical ones, since even quite mundane or
quotidian social practices might inhere to the power and the quality of ‘acting otherwise’. That does
not mean that practices that are organized by such a political ‘teleo-affective structure’ do always and
necessarily have political outcomes, in the sense of having a direct effect on society; their original
political impetus might also vanish or fall victim to assimilation, as is the case in some forms of
responsible or ethical consumerism (see e.g., Johnston 2008). In this regard, it is particularly important
to empirically investigate the objectives and the affectivities according to which certain practices are
carried out, as well as to analyze in how far respective practices are actually leading to a challenging
6
In “The Human Condition”, Arendt
[
1958
]
(1998) distinguishes human activity into three separate modes: labor, work and
action. In contrast to labor and work, which refer to practices that serve to sustain life and that produce tools or commodities,
action is the mode of human activity that takes place in-between people via the acts of ‘speech and action’. Action can
thereby be interpreted as the political mode of human activity, since it makes humans distinguishable in their plurality and
uniqueness (ibid., p. 179).

Soc. Sci. 2019,8, 331 11 of 16
and to a modification of societal orders, norms and values. Such a phenomenological, or ‘real-world’,
perspective (see Zorell and Yang in this issue) is of great worth because it allows us to analyze
political action independently from political institutions and conventional law-making processes,
but rather in terms of their situatedness, their contextuality and their affective dimension. Moreover,
it enables researchers to deconstruct the local–global dichotomy and prevents them from uncritically
essentializing and prioritizing local structures and policies, since it conceptualizes FS in terms of its
empirically recognizable, and horizontally evolving phenomena and appearances, rather than in terms
of its scale, which yields different insights into ‘the political’.
5. Conclusions: Food Sovereignty as ‘Diverse Citizenship’
Looking back at the congress in Schwäbisch Hall, while keeping in mind the theoretical elaborations
of this contribution, reveals some valuable new insights. As noted in the introduction, the aim of this
contribution was to focus in more detail on the contested political nature of food sovereignty as well
as to discuss the dynamics and the actions that have brought it into being. In particular, I wanted to
investigate the paradox that on the one hand, there exists a politically coherent community that declares
a new legal framework, while on the other, there is obviously no common foundational ground, such as
a shared territorial space, a founding myth or a common cultural frame of reference that ties these
groups together. Therefore, my guiding questions were oriented towards the problematic of finding
this foundational ‘ground’ as well asking the question of the legitimization of the respective claims.
Furthermore, I wanted to discuss an alternative understanding of political action, which conceives of
political practices not as pre-given categories but as a situational and emergent phenomena that are
closely connected to the quotidian practices of social life. Therefore, I want to point out in the following
some aspects that provide answers to these questions and which make it possible to understand why
the movement for FS may be framed as a post-national community of ‘diverse citizens’.
As discussed above, the FS movement shows very clearly in how far multifaceted post-national
democratization processes emerge ‘glocally’ at multiple social sites, such as local sites of food production,
processing and distribution, as well as (e.g., in the case in Schwäbisch Hall) congresses and events with
a far-reaching and global impact. Therewith, according to Tully (2014, p. 33ff), these post-national
spaces of ‘diverse citizenship’ are not being built on the basis of legal norms and an institutionalized
status, in the sense of ‘modern citizenship’. They rather have to be understood as the result of a high
variety of multi-faceted political practices, of people acting together ‘in concert’. In this regard, it is
most remarkable—and the example of FS shows this aspect very clearly—that these practices, e.g.,
agro-ecological farming or saving seed, do not necessarily share the characteristics of conventional
political practices such as lobbying, marching or negotiating; instead, they rather reveal their political
and transformative character upon the second glance. To be more precise, and using Schatzki’s
terminology, on the one hand, they are organized by, e.g., the ‘teleo-affective structure’ of, e.g., ‘making
a living’ or of ‘just surviving’ (consuming and producing food, or selling it), and on the other hand
they also may reveal the ‘teleo-affective structure’ of ‘acting otherwise’, i.e., of transforming societal
orders and of pointing to certain social grievances, as is the case in several agro-ecological projects or
community supported agriculture initiatives.
Thus, these kinds of practices reveal a dual nature; they are simultaneously social and political,
in the sense of aiming in a self-referential manner, i.e., in virtue of their actual exercise, at modifying
their own rules. Therefore, they are characterized to a high extent by reflexivity, in the sense that
they point to certain ‘worldly’ aspects of public life and social orders, which is, as I argue, one of
the most important and constitutive features of political practices (see also Fladvad and Glöckler
forthcoming). Furthermore, these kind of practices, which Tully (1999) would label as ‘practices of
freedom’ or as practices of ‘thinking and acting differently’, represent the ‘foundational backbone’ of
the claim for FS. In so doing, they fill the rather vague idea of FS with a concrete meaning and practical
substance. Or, to put it differently, the FS discourse (and thus events and congresses such as the one in
Schwäbisch Hall) does not emerge out of words or ideas, but originates from manifold practices of

Soc. Sci. 2019,8, 331 12 of 16
‘acting otherwise’, “through which the peasantry constitutes itself as distinctively different” (van der
Ploeg 2008, p. 265, emphasis in original).
However, the congress in Schwäbisch Hall, as well as the mentioned charter on the “Rights
of Peasants”, show that ‘diverse citizens’ do not necessarily avoid the conventional institutions of
cosmopolitan democracy, in this case the legal system of the UN. At first glance, this might seem
contrary to Tully’s argument that ‘diverse citizens’ are constituted in virtue of their very own civic
activities, and not on the basis of the institutions of cosmopolitan democracy. However, at second glance
this strategy is not a contradiction to ‘diverse citizenship’. In fact, ‘diverse citizens’ indeed address
their particular claims to the transnational political sphere via conventional political practices such as
negotiations, lobbying and the declaring of new legal frameworks, as experienced in Schwäbisch Hall.
In doing so, they use existing institutions as strategical means to avoid assimilation and marginalization
and in order to be recognized as legitimate political subjects within the wider public realm. In this
regard, it is crucial to note that they do not accept the existing rules of the prevailing legal system,
but rather introduce new or modified rules into the ‘political game’. Nevertheless, this is a subordinate
step, or as Tully puts it: “Civic activities [
. . .
] can be more or less institutionalized and rationalized (in
countless forms), but this is secondary. The primary thing is the concrete games of citizenship and
the ways they are played” (Tully 2014, p. 35, emphasis in original). Thereby—and the congress in
Schwäbisch Hall shows this aspect very clearly—‘diverse citizens’ actively create their own situational
political spaces and disclose certain (local) food practices and rather remote or concealed peasant
realities to the global public. Moreover, in virtue of jointly elaborating, authoring and declaring
a common legal framework, i.e., of engaging in a freely accessible communicative democratic process,
they create an intersubjectively shared sense of self-identification, self-awareness and of belonging to
a post-national democratic community.
These processes and manifold practices of ‘citizenization’, however, do not emerge out of ‘thin air’.
What essentially ties these practices and actors together is their shared, albeit differential, condition of
being affected by the ‘corporate food regime’. This antagonist relationship thereby creates an animating
and highly effective political energy and unifying power that transcends social demarcations and
distinguishing statuses such as class, ethnicity, gender, nationality, borders or other. That does not
mean that these categorizations have lost their relevance or their effectiveness; neither does it mean that
internal differences and conflicts among this diverse post-national community are being solved once
and for all. Rather, the principle of being affected by the ‘corporate food regime’ reveals its political
power in democratically legitimizing their manifold struggles for the legal recognition of peasants’
rights and for FS. However, following Tully’s earlier work (Tully 1999), it is important to understand
this struggle not as an end state or as a struggle that has a final goal, since this would imply that there
is an ideal consensus under which all concerns and demands are being met. Rather, the “multiplicity of
democratic processes or practices of challenging and negotiating the rules of mutual recognition” (Tully
2000, p. 478) are neither complete nor part of a universal common good; they rather underlie their
groundlessness, their undecidability and a radical openness to the future, since they are embedded in
an ongoing and never-ending political struggle between hegemonies and counter-hegemonies (see
Mouffe 2007).
In view of these considerations, it also becomes clear that, ‘diverse citizenship’ is not necessarily
synonymous to the idea of ‘environmental citizenship’ (which also represents a highly contested
concept and field of research, see Dobson and Bell 2006). In particular, the idea of ‘liberal environmental
citizenship’ (Bell 2005)—i.e., individuals, who are amenable to and equipped with certain rights and
duties—prioritizes the power of institutions (represented in laws, orders, norms, rights obligations
and responsibilities) over practices and not vice versa. Furthermore, ‘liberal environmental citizenship’
prescriptively conceptualizes citizenship as a theoretical ideal of universal and inclusive social fairness
and sustainability (Zorell and Yang in this issue), which is not compatible to the rather open idea of
‘diverse citizenship’. However, ‘diverse citizenship’ also does not exclude notions of ‘environmental

Soc. Sci. 2019,8, 331 13 of 16
citizenship’, in particular when the perspective on environmental citizens is practice-based (ibid.),
which means that it focuses on the diversity of bodily and prefigurative bottom-up activities.
The communities of ‘diverse citizens’ thus created have, as I have shown, no fixed place in
space or territorial borders, neither do they build on a commonly shared founding myth; however,
their political strength and their foundation lies in their commonly shared antagonist as well as in their
shared orientation to practices of ‘acting otherwise’. Based on these considerations, many new possible
questions may be raised. How do different FS-practices connect to each other? In what way do they
relate, e.g., to the logics of the market economy, to regulative policies, to conscious and environmentally
friendly consumer choices or to the influences of the Degrowth movement? Do political practices
necessarily lead to political results, in the sense of having a direct effect on societal orders? Also,
the legal dimension is of great relevance. Are new rights, such as those elaborated in Schwäbisch Hall,
merely symbols, i.e., talk without substance? Or, do they effectively protect peasants from heteronomy
and aggressive market forces? And in what way do they lead to possible new or modified discourses
and practices around food? Questions like these can only be investigated empirically, e.g., in the form
of multi-sited ethnographies (Hannerz 2003) and similar approaches. However, theoretical insights
from postmodern political thought as well as from social theory, as presented in this contribution,
may be of great worth for future research on initiatives and practices of FS as well as on the nature of
(environmental) citizenship.
Funding: This research received no external funding.
Conflicts of Interest: The author declares no conflict of interest.
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