Introduction and Comments: Teresa Cunha (CES)

About

According to the World Inequality Report 2022 (Chancel, Piketty, Saez, Zucman, et al: 11), prepared by the interdisciplinary team of scientists who make up the World Inequality Lab (Research Laboratory associated with the Paris School of Economics, France, and the University of Berkeley, California, USA) inequality is a political choice. Our global economic policy is leading to hunger and destruction, says the Report (Ibid.: 95). Increasing internal and internationalised conflicts/wars, growing climate variability and extremes, economic sluggishness and slowdown, and inaccessibility to a healthy diet are the main drivers of food insecurity and malnutrition, which continue to increase on a planetary scale, in commonly combined frequency and intensity (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP; WHO, 2021, p. vi). As a counterpoint to the extreme poverty of people and the Earth, this seminar will present the Brazilian experience of agroecological food production and the struggle to affirm the human right to food and the right of nature to adequate management.

1/ Firstly, to pursue the postcolonial desire and anti-colonial struggle (Rivera Cusicanqui, 2016, p. 3), the intertwining of the coloniality of power (Quijano, 2000) and of knowledge (Lander, 2000), fought from the epistemologies of the South (Santos, 2014) in the construction of political spheres of liberation (Dussel, 2009) in Latin America will be drawn;

2/ To confront the conflict capital versus life (Pérez Orozco, 2017, p. 116), ecofeminist proposals (Plumwood, 1990; Shiva, 2013; Mies, 2019; Svampa, 2019; Valle, 2021) that translate policies marked by the indivisibility of life and assume that collectively shared responsibility opens to the possibility of the emergence of a set of conditions and methodologies of transferability and applicability of knowledges present in socioeconomies such as agroecology (Cunha; Valle, 2019) will be discussed, among other dimensions.

3/ Agroecological practice (Leonel Júnior, 2016) can be seen as a possibility of effecting the right of nature, subject of rights, beyond the anthropocentric notion of valuation over life (Gudynas, 2019, p. 103) or be glimpsed as a confrontation with the logic of capital, which demonstrates a metabolic failure (Foster, 2005), since agroecology has the potential to reconnect human beings and nature, field and city, without appealing to accumulation and reproduction of capital.

Bio notes

Teresa Cunha holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Coimbra. She is a senior researcher at the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra where she lectures in several PhD Courses; co-coordinates the publication 'Oficina do CES'and the Research Program 'Epistemologies of the South. She co-coordinated between 2012 and 2022 the Gender Workshop Series. She coordinates the Advanced School 'Feminist Ecologies of Knowledges'. She is an associated-professor at the College of Education of the Polytechnic College Coimbra and an associate researcher at CODESRIA and the Center for African Studies at Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique. In 2017, the President of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste awarded her with the Order of Timor-Leste. Her research interests are feminisms and postcolonialisms; other feminist economies and women's economies; post war transition, peace and memories; women's human rights in the Indian Ocean space. She has published several scientific books and articles in several countries and languages of which stand out: Women, Territories and Identities, Territórios e Identidades vol 1, 2 e 3; Women InPower Women. Other economies created and led by women from the non-imperial south; Never Trust Sindarela. Feminisms, Postcolonialisms, Mozambique and Timor-Leste; Essays for Democracy. Justice, dignity and good-living; They in the South and North; Women's Voices of Timor; Timor-Leste: Chronicle of an Observation of Courage; Feto Timor Nain Hitu - Seven Women of Timor; Walking Through Other Paths and Roots of Participation.

Gladstone Leonel Júnior is an associate professor at the Faculty of Law and the Postgraduate Programme in Constitutional Law at the Fluminense Federal University. PhD. in Law from the University of Brasília (2014). Doctoral internship at the Facultat de Dret of the Universitat de València, Spain. Post-doctoral fellow at the Human Rights and Citizenship Programme at the University of Brasília. Member of the National Secretariat of IPDMS - Institute for Research, Rights and Social Movements (2018-2021). Master of Laws from the Universidade Estadual Paulista (2011). Specialist in Political Sociology from the Federal University of Paraná (2008). Graduated in Law from the Federal University of Viçosa (2007). He coordinates the research group Crítica Jurídica Contemporânea; member of the group O Direito Achado na Rua

Luísa de Pinho Valle is a PhD candidate in the Democracy in the 21st Century Programme at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra. She holds a degree in law (USU/RJ, Brazil), a specialization in public law and public management (UniCEUB, Brazil), a master's degree in law (UnB, Brazil) and in social and legal sciences (UPO, Spain).

References

Chancel, Piketty, Saez, Zucman, et al. World Inequality Report 2022, World Inequality Lab. Disponível em https://wir2022.wid.world/.

Cunha, Teresa; Valle, Luísa de Pinho. O respeito à economia da vida e as pedagogias ecofeministas. Reflexões sobre a prática da agroecologia e do hamutuk. Otra Economía, vol. 12, n. 22, 2019, pp. 238-252.

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Valle, Luísa de Pinho. Ecofeminismo e buen vivir: dois movimentos propulsores da expansão da racionalidade ambiental. In Reinventar o social: movimentos e narrativas de resistência nas Américas. Isabel Caldeira; Maria José Canelo; Gonçalo Cholant (Orgs.). Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra, 2021, p. 137-172.