Transnational Agrarian Movements, Food Sovereignty, and Legal Mobilization

In this chapter, we analyse a diversity of legal mobilizations by contemporary agrarian movements, from the creation of new human rights to direct participation in global food governance, the institutionalization of food sovereignty, civil disobedience, and peoples’ tribunals. Our main argument is that there is a need to expand the scope and methods of research in law and anthropology to account for the diversity of actors and alliances, their innovative legal strategies, the different scales, and the multiplicity of institutional and extra-institutional arenas in which transnational agrarian movements engage with the law in their struggles against capitalism and neoliberalism. To document and analyse social movement innovations, lawyers and anthropologists must engage with transnational, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches, and critically reflect on their methods, roles, and positionalities as social actors involved in social justice struggles.