Edible revolutions: Food, power, and postcapitalist transformation

Abstract

This chapter explores food as both a lens and a strategic site for social transformation, critically examining the limits of framing strategy through the dichotomy of prefigurative and contentious politics. Drawing on diverse food movements, from food alternatives to food justice and food sovereignty, it argues for a plural, context- sensitive approach that combines grassroots alternatives, social mobilisation, state engagement, and structural change. Central to this is a relational view of power, shaped from above and negotiated and contested from below, with the everyday as a key site of struggle. La Vía Campesina’s movement- and alliance-building experience exemplifies how solidarity and mutual transformation of intersecting identities and scales can counter social fragmentation and contribute to advancing systemic change.