From left behind to leader: gender, agency, and food sovereignty in China
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From left behind to leader: gender, agency, and food sovereignty in China Li Zhang1 Accepted: 13 May 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Capitalist reforms usually drive outmigration of peasants to cities, while elders, children, and women responsible for their care are “left behind” in the countryside. The plight of these “left behind” populations is a major focus of recent agrarian studies in China. However, rural women are not merely passive victims of these transformations. Building on ethnographic research in Guangxi and Henan provinces from 2013 to 2017, and drawing on critical gender studies and feminist political ecology, I show how the food safety crisis in China creates conditions for peasant women to increase control and income from organic food production, often establishing alternative food networks with the support of female scholars and NGO organizers. Thus, I shift focus of scholarship on rural women from “left behind” to leaders in struggles for justice and food sovereignty. Keywords China · Left-behind populations · Gender · Agency · Alternative food networks · Food sovereignty Abbreviations AFN Alternative Food Network BOFM Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market CCP Chinese Communist Party COHD College of Humanities and Development Studies, China Agricultural University CSA Community Supported Agriculture
Introduction A central characteristic of China’s recent market-oriented reforms has been the massive outmigration of peasants to the cities, where they take up temporary jobs as migrant workers in industry, construction, and various service sectors. This results from an urban-focused export-oriented industrial policy, price differentials for agricultural and manufactured products, uneven incomes from agriculture and manufacturing/services, and an urban bias in cultural attitudes and the provision of social services (Wen 2001; Yan 2003). Moreover, China’s household registration system (hukou) * Li Zhang [email protected] 1
Department of Global and International Studies, University of California, Irvine, 3151 Social Science Plaza, Irvine, CA 92697‑5100, USA
generally curtails the permanent settlement of rural populations in major cities, excluding them and their families from essential social services such as education (Wen 2001; Yan 2003). So as the working-age rural population migrates out for temporary urban employment, elders, children, and women responsible for their care are “left behind”. The characteristics and plight of these “left behind” populations have become focus of much scholarship in development studies, agrarian studies, and various social sciences (Ye and Wu 2008; Wu and Ye 2016; Ye et al. 2016), and these have contributed to promoting various government policies to address the predicament of these people and the “hollow villages” where they remain. This scholarship and the political mobilization around it are commendable for bringing much needed governmental policies and resources to address the social (economic, cultural, ecological, etc.) problems that come about
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