Abstract
In less than two decades, genetically modified crops (GMOs) have captured more than ninety percent of the market for major U.S. crops such as corn, cotton, and soy. The success of this technology in the U.S. market has masked intense and ongoing global conflicts over its spread. Chaia Heller’s book, Food, Farms, and Solidarity examines how French anti-GMO social movements are tied up in issues of protest against globalization, the power of multinational biotechnology corporations, and the defense of regional food cultures and economies. Heller focuses on Confédération Paysanne, a French group that represents the interests of small farmers and farm interests, drawing on the cultural place of the paysanne (peasant or smallholding farmer) in French history and culture. Though romantic visions of the French paysanne are still important to the discursive construction of French history and self-image, in reality the industrialization of French agriculture through the twentieth century followed a model more similar to the U.S. case than it was different, and a relatively small number of French farmers now account for the majority of agricultural production in France, especially for the many commodities that are intended for export (Chapter Two). These realities provide context for the rise of movements, as in the case of Confédération Paysanne, dedicated to protecting the place of paysanne agriculture in France, as well as these organizations’ connections to global networks of resistance.
Heller’s analysis is based on a long-term ethnographic study of Confédération Paysanne, and she uses a mix of theoretical traditions to support her analysis, including political ecology, actor-network theory, and world-systems theory. In sum, the approach might be described as the global politics of bio-materiality, where we are in the midst of a struggle for who will control land, seeds, and labor, and the capital that accrues from food production. Heller argues that Confédération Paysanne’s politics are framed by a “rationality of solidarity” based in part on the meaning of the French word solidarité, or a “humanistic concern with maintaining the integrity of social fabrics” (p. 27). This rationality of solidarity does not accept the instrumentalist divide between economic and ethical issues that often come up when discussing risk and technology, especially in the case of a technology like GMOs. At the same time, members of Confédération Paysanne rely on terms of scientific rationality to frame their critiques of industrial agriculture and globalization, highlighting the flexibility of their discourses. In this way, Confédération Paysanne’s approach resembles the efforts of broader struggles for environmental justice, which often reflect a tension between resistance of authority claims through technoscience (on the part of dominant powers) and, at the same time, a frequent embrace of these same discourses, in order to legitimate the movements’ own claims of harm and calls for justice. Confédération Paysanne faced this same dilemma, as they wanted to use the results of research suggesting that GMOs could cause a range of harms, and yet they also did not want to appear as backward “ploucs (hicks) fearful of scientific innovation” (p. 124).
Solidarity structures the relationships that Confédération Paysanne builds with other groups seeking to protect the rights and resources of smallholders, such as La Via Campesina and India’s Karnataka State Farmers’ Union. Though this activism is frequently described in the context of social movements mobilizing against the forces of globalization, Heller describes the stance of groups like Confédération Paysanne as movements for “alter-globalization,” highlighting their role in promoting alternatives to the development paradigm that shaped (and continues to shape) the rise of industrial food production. In this respect, Confédération Paysanne’s resistance to GMOs is not tied solely to questions about the technology and risks associated with it, but with larger concerns over the rights and sovereignty of smallholders subject to a global food system increasingly controlled by a few multinational corporate interests. These concerns in turn help to explain the diversity of activities engaged in by Confédération Paysanne, including demonstrations against McDonald’s franchises in France (led by the iconic leader José Bové) and the group’s participation in the 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle. Ultimately, Confédération Paysanne’s resistance to GMOs is part of a larger effort to protect the food sovereignty of smallholders in France and beyond.
The key strength of Heller’s book is the depth of her ethnographic material. Heller served as a translator for Bové and the delegation that Confédération Paysanne sent to the United States during the 1999 Seattle protests, and she had first-hand access to key personnel and the documents of the organization. These rich data allow Heller to show the ways that Confédération Paysanne is uniquely French, especially in its use of discourses of food and power informed by French history and politics. These understandings help illustrate the promise and also the great challenges that exist for organizations like Confédération Paysanne when attempting to build global alliances. Of course, distance is a defining issue, but Heller carefully shows how deeply discursive barriers trouble easy connections between Confédération Paysanne and partners with diverse political and cultural traditions. This is where Heller’s ethnographic approach yields its richest results, as in a fascinating scene where Heller describes a deep misunderstanding between a delegation from Confédération Paysanne and a group of American farmers, centered around a gift of Roquefort cheese. The cheese is invested with significant and layered meanings for the French, but was utterly disregarded by the Americans, leading to frustration and missed opportunities (pp. 211–217).
Conversely, the downside to Heller’s approach is that she is not able to track in fuller detail the way that discourses between Confédération Paysanne and their allies overlap and diverge. For example, the Roquefort cheese incident shows the depth of meanings that members of Confédération Paysanne attributed to it and their larger cause, but the American farmers are much flatter in how they are represented. Of course, Heller’s main focus is on the French case and especially her close work with Confédération Paysanne; however, Heller also claims to present a multi-site ethnographic approach in Food, Farms, and Solidarity, and a deeper understanding of how Confédération Paysanne compares with other cases would help to illuminate the relationships and contrasts with other groups. For instance, Heller claims that there is no equivalent of Confédération Paysanne in the United States (p. 209), but the history of agrarian Populism in the nineteenth century, including especially the Grange movement, provides some interesting parallels.
In sum, Food, Farms, and Solidarity provides a deep and fascinating case study of Confédération Paysanne and contemporary struggles over agricultural biotechnology and food sovereignty. Despite a few organizational quirks, Heller’s ethnographic approach makes for a compelling and accessible read, and the book would be appropriate for a topical course on food studies or social movements at the advanced undergraduate or graduate level.