Overview

Mobilizing Hope, Fighting for Change analyzes an unusual development in social movement studies and food politics more generally: the formation of an interracial alliance of farmers and farm workers who together demand transformative changes to U.S. agriculture by calling for food sovereignty. Such an alliance, as Anthony R. Pahnke shows, is unusual given how social movement alliances in the United States, particularly those related to agrarian issues, have historically been deeply divided by race and occupation. Pahnke’s study offers a novel theory for social movement alliance formation, focusing especially on the dynamics of learning. He documents how since the 1980s there have been unprecedented openings for people to work together due to the rise of transnational activist networks, changes in the international political economy, and evolving forms of state authority. Foregrounding the voices of activists, Mobilizing Hope, Fighting for Change compares the trajectories of four U.S.-based movements over time-the Mvskoke Food Sovereignty Initiative based in Oklahoma, the Family Farm Defenders of Wisconsin, the Farmworker Association of Florida, and the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives-documenting how they have united in demanding food sovereignty while remaining distinct from one another.  

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9781496243454

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Reviews

“With his deep experiential knowledge (working in farmworker and farm justice movements) and his nuanced understanding of agricultural policy history, agrocorporate political economy, and agrarian crisis in the United States, Brazil, and beyond, Anthony Pahnke contextualizes and clarifies the urgency of food sovereignty and agrarian viability. Accordingly, this book makes a needed and timely contribution to agrifood studies, rural studies, social movement analysis, and political and social sciences at large. And, more importantly, it will be of use to practitioners and agroecology mobilizations around the world.”—Garrett Graddy-Lovelace, provost associate professor in the School of International Service at American University “Mobilizing Hope, Fighting for Change stands out for its rigorous and nuanced analysis of four organizations that have different racial compositions and occupations. Anthony Pahnke situates these movements within the longer arc of agrarian struggles in the United States, skillfully weaving together structural factors as well as the micro-social complexities of alliance-building. This well-researched and accessible book is an outstanding contribution to scholarship on food sovereignty, the racial politics of U.S. food movements, and study of social movements.”—Matthew C. Canfield, author of Translating Food Sovereignty: Cultivating Justice in an Age of Transnational Governance

Author Information

Anthony R. Pahnke is an associate professor of international relations at San Francisco State University and serves as the vice president of Family Farm Defenders. He is the author of Brazil’s Long Revolution: Radical Achievements of the Landless Workers Movement and Agrarian Crisis in the United States: Pathways for Reform.  

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