Whose sovereignty? : Food Regimes and Food Sovereignty in Indonesia

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International Relations

Dept. of Global Political Studies Bachelor programme – IR103L 15 credits thesis

Spring 13/05/2020

Supervisor: Ulrika Kolben Waaranperä

Whose sovereignty?

Food Regimes and Food Sovereignty in Indonesia

Jacob Schantz Klausen

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Acknowledgements

The author of this thesis would like to thank Dwita Nugrahanti for the help in translating documents as well as the helpful discussion on the specific detail of the translation.

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Abstract

This thesis examines how food sovereignty has been conceptualized by the Indonesian peasant union, Serikat Petani Indonesia, and how this framing has been affected by the transnational food sovereignty movement and national ideology of food self-sufficiency in Indonesia. This thesis will analyze how food sovereignty is conceptualized in the document Vision for Food Sovereignty 2014-2024 released by Serikat Petani Indonesia. The analysis will be conducted through a critical discourse analysis. Critical discourse analysis will account for both the theory and method, however the theory will be synthesized through FRT. The analysis will look at the food sovereignty discourse in its larger historical context. This thesis finds that while food sovereignty has traveled transnationally through the food sovereignty movement as a counter-hegemonic concept that propagate support for peasant farmers and their control for land and resources, in the Vision for Food Sovereignty 2014-2024 document, food sovereignty is framed as food sovereignty for Indonesia, the country. This means that the ability for peasants to mobilize food sovereignty in Indonesia for the purpose of supporting the control of land and recourses is diminished. Thus, food sovereignty has been co-opted and reproduced in the hegemonic relations between farmers, corporations and the state.

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1. Introduction

Food sovereignty has emerged as a topic of interest within the field of international relations (IR) and in international political economy (IPE). The concept has been researched by scholars as an alternative to the conception of food security. Food sovereignty promotes small-holder and peasant farming and are inextricably linked to the international peasant’s movement of Via Campesina and the food sovereignty movement (Rosset and Martinez-Torres, 2010). In researching the movement as emerging as a grassroots movement from the global south, scholars have traced how Via Campesina have had an impact on United Nations organizations such as its human rights organizations and food and agriculture organizations (Dunford, 2016). This is particularly true for food regime theory (FRT) scholars that argue that food sovereignty has emerged as resistance against the current corporate food regime that promotes free trade and corporatism within the international food system (Friedmann, 2006 and McMichael, 2009). While scholars have traced the success of the food sovereignty movements in spreading the concept, scholars have been more skeptical over the implementation in national settings. Scholars have argued that food sovereignty, implemented into national settings, are unable to fulfill its promise of providing a superior approach to feeding the world’s hungry (Kappeler, 2015). Other scholars have argued that the concept in national setting fails to reproduce social relations for farmers (McKay et al., 2014 and Neilson, 2019). This poses the puzzle, what challenges does the concept face when travelling from an international movement to a local context?

1.1 Aim and research question

This thesis seeks to answer the research question of how is food sovereignty conceptualized by the Indonesian peasant union? This research question is posed in order to research the puzzle of why food sovereignty tends to fail to produce new power-relations when picked up by national policy, despite its success on the international level? In order to answer the research question, this thesis aims to analyze how the conceptualization of food sovereignty by the Indonesian peasant union, Serikat Petani Indonesia (SPI), has been framed in the ‘Vision of Indonesian Food Sovereignty 2014-2024’ (VOIFS) program and how this conceptualization has been affected by the hegemonic relations in the country.

Indonesia has been chosen as a case study as there is a strong national ideology of food-self-sufficiency in the country, however despite this, Indonesian agriculture has been unsuccessful in archiving food self-sufficiency (Neilson, 2019: 79). Indonesia also has a long history of

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social movements leveraging the Indonesian ideological interconnection between land, agriculture and sovereignty (Peluso et al., 2008). Thus, analyzing the relationship between the national ideology of food in Indonesia and the international concept of food sovereignty will allow us to analyze how food sovereignty has been fitted for the Indonesian context, and the power structures that has shaped it. In order to analyze the puzzle and answer the research question, this thesis will conduct a critical discourse analysis (CDA) and analyze Indonesia in its relation to FRT.

1.2 Method and material

This thesis will conduct the analysis using Fairclough’s three-dimensional approach to CDA. CDA is a form of discourse analysis that are ontologically and epistemologically based in Gramscian critical theory. It subsequently does not seek to analyze text as something that creates power relations, but rather seek to analyze the power behind the text and how the text is used to produce and reproduce social practice. CDA thus seek to analyze discourse through the Gramscian concept of hegemony (Fairclough, 1993: 91-96).

The analysis will use FRT to analyze the development of the social practice within food systems in Indonesia. FRT is a Marxist macro-historical approach to the historical development of international food systems within capitalism (Friedmann and McMichael, 1989). Using FRT as a framework for analyzing the international social practice that has impacted the Indonesian food system and help analyzing the hegemonic structures that has underpinned Indonesian discourse as well as the counter-hegemonic discourses that underpin food sovereignty discourse.

The ‘VOIFS’ program has been chosen for the analysis as this document intersects several discourses in Indonesia. Firstly, the document is centered around food sovereignty and are released by SPI. SPI is an Indonesian peasant union that are heavily involved in Via Campesina, a transnational coalition of peasant movements whose main goal is to fight industrialization and neoliberalism within agriculture and rural areas.

Secondly, SPI campaigned for the incumbent President of Indonesia, President Widodo, who in turn has pledged to enact SPI’s vision for food sovereignty. Thus, the document has served as a pretext for SPI to support the presidency of Widodo (SPI, 2019). Food self-sufficiency is also strongly related to Indonesia’s national identity and seen as a prerequisite for the independence and freedom for Indonesia (Neilson, 2019: 78-79). This program allows us to analyze the complex social and power relations that underpin hegemony and resistance to hegemony. The data and methods will be discussed in detail in the methods chapter.

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1.3 Delimitations

The purpose of this thesis is analyzing the discourse of food sovereignty and the power-relations that has surrounded the discourse. The critical aspect of CDA implies that this thesis will conduct the analysis through a critical theory and critical realist ontology. Subsequently, this approach contains both interpretivist and positivist approaches. This ontology and epistemology thus seek to strike a balance between internal and external validity. However, the consequence of this is that this approach does not goes as close to the discourse as other approaches to discourse analysis but rather filters discourse through critical theory (Halperin and Heath, 2017: 50, 338-339). What critical theory also implies is that this approach considers the political and social relations as a whole rather than segmented (Cox, 1981). this approach to discourse thus treats discourse as directly interacting with material structures and as a continuing facet of history (Fairclough, 1993).

1.4 Outline

This thesis will be divided into five chapters including this introduction. The next chapter will be conducting a literature review, discussing how food has been researched in IR and IPE and discussing the theories of the analysis, FRT and the theorical aspects of CDA. The next chapter of the thesis will discuss the method used. As the theoretical underpinnings will already have been discussed in the theory section, this chapter will focus on the data of the analysis as well as the three-stage framework that the analysis will be conducted with. The thesis will then move to the analysis chapter, which will conduct the analysis as has been outlined in the methodology chapter. Following the analysis, the final chapter will conclude the thesis.

2. Theory and literature review

The approach to food in IPE and IR has been researched in a multitude of ways. Some scholars have researched the topic as an economic or industrial sector (Paarlberg, 1997; Anderson and Martin, 2005; Gallagher, 2008 and Hoda and Gulati, 2008). This have been challenged by other scholars who have analyzed food and agriculture as a social relation rather than a sector of capitalism. Some scholars argue that the production of food have been restructured into a capitalist sector for the detriment of peasants (McMichael, 1997; Borras, 2007; Alonso-Fradejas et al., 2016 and Bastiaens, 2016). Scholars have similarly researched how the consolidation of land into capitalism have affected how food is produced and consumed (Ho and Spoor; 2006; Novo et al., 2010; Wallerstein, 2010; Zoomers, 2010; Cotula, 2012; Borras

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et al., 2013; Schoenberger et al., 2017; Borras et al., 2018 and Xu, 2018). This has spurred attention from scholars to the countermovement of this development, food sovereignty (Boyer, 2010; Martinez-Torres and Rosset, 2010; McKay, et al., 2014; Burnett and Murphy, 2014; Dunford, 2016 and Claeys, 2020).

This chapter will conduct the theory and literature review of the thesis. It will begin by discussing critical theory. This will be followed by a review of the debates of food within IR and IPE. The chapter will then go on to discuss discourse analysis and how CDA differ ontologically and epistemologically from more traditional approaches to discourse analysis. The chapter will then discuss FRT and how FRT relates to these debates. This final section of this chapter will discuss how the analysis will use FRT to inform the material aspects of CDA.

2.1 Critical theory

Critical theory is a label that can be attached to a variety of theories of IR and IPE. It is though generally accepted that critical theory encompasses an analysis of the production and reproduction of ideology through a Marxist perspective. One of the most prolific scholars of critical theory in IR is Cox (1981 and 1983). Cox (ibid) conceived critical theory through a neo-Gramscian approach. Cox (1981) distinguishes between critical theory and problem-solving theory. According to him, this distinction is centered around how the theory approaches social and power structures. Problem-solving theories sees the prevailing social and power structures as given and therefore seeks to solve problems within these structures. Critical theory on the other hand seeks to analyze the social and power structures as the source of the problems in question.

Cox (1981) argues that the distinction between critical and problem-solving theory emphasizes the need for critical theory to analyze the social and power relations as historical subjects. Critical theory thus has a historical epistemology and seek to research these social and power relations as historically constituted. The grounding of critical theory in neo-Gramscianism means that critical theory seeks to analyze social and power-relation through a historical materialist ontology (ibid, 1983).

Neo-Gramscianism is based in a Marxist, historical materialist ontology, but as mentioned above, Gramscianism goes beyond traditional approaches to Marxism in that is theorizes how ideology and commons sense is producing and reproducing hegemonic power relations (Rupert, 2003). Hegemony is one of the central concepts of neo-Gramscian critical theory. Hegemony is the dialectical process and social relation is which people are ruled through a mixture of coercion and consent. Coercion refers to what is typically considered domination

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by other theories. Coercion refers to how relations of power are produced and reproduced through coercion. Under capitalism, coercion is produced through the explicit and implicit threat of force or through the threat of deprival of vital resources (Cox, 1983).

Consent, as opposed to coercion, comes through social classes and groups consenting to the hegemony. Consent is produced through ideology and common sense. Both ideology and common sense are series beliefs that are produced through the hegemony in order to justify it. Ideology refers to world views and ideas that are intellectually justified. Commons sense refer to the further development of ideology in the collective consciousness where intellectual justifications for the hegemony are no longer needed and is now considered being a feature of the natural world i.e. simply being commons sense (Rupert, 2003: 184-189).

To summarize, this thesis will conceive of critical theory in two ways, the first way will frame the debate on food within Cox’s (1981) approach to critical theory as a critical approach to theory rather than problem solving theory. The second way this thesis will approach critical theory is in its theoretical and methodical base. This will be approached through a Neo-Gramscian ontology and epistemology.

2.2 debates on food within international food and international political

economy

The distinction between critical and problem-solving theory is a useful way of framing the debate on food security within IR and IPE. Most problem-solving theories conceptualizes food as a commodity. The conceptualization of food as a commodity means that mechanisms such as the market are the solution for lack of food. Issues such as how to prevent trade distortions caused by protectionism and the subsidization of agriculture and trade agreements such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture (AOA) are often analyzed (Hoda and Gulati, 2007). Scholars have argued that the subsidized agriculture in the global north benefit the development of the global south by allowing the export of cheap foods (Kurjanska and Risse, 2008: 34).

Critical theory on the other hand seek to analyze how institutions and social and power relations surrounding food has come to be. From a critical theory standpoint, the problem-solving approach to food security has been criticized by scholars that argues that subsidies create trade distortions that harms the ability of local farmers to compete against the dumping of cheap subsidized food that comes from global north, thus harming small-holder farming and forcing agriculture in the global south to produce exotic goods that accommodate consumers in the global north (McMichael, 2009: 148).

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Scholars have argued that the problem-solving approach to food security does not take into account where the food comes from and in which ways the food is grown and that the commodification of food puts it under the jurisdiction of free-trade regimes. Thus, this approach to food security is based on neoliberal and free-trade policies and this creates food insecurity for poor communities as they are relying on volatile markets (Pachón-Ariza, 2013). This has been made increasingly complicated with the introduction of what Borras et al. (2013: 163-164) calls flex crops, such as maize, which can be grown for human consumption or processed into sugar or biofuel, meaning that agriculture is further commodified and entering multiple value-chains.

2.2.1 Food sovereignty and food security

Critical approaches to food within IR and IPE have created interest for food sovereignty. Martinez-Torres and Rosset (2010: 169-170) argues that food sovereignty is an approach to agriculture, land ownership and trade within foodstuff that are centered around the development and protection of peasants. Thus, one key element of food sovereignty are the rights of peasants to protect their rights to use land while rejecting other types of agriculture that are detrimental to peasants or ecology. This is usually aimed at large agribusiness that are argued to be destructive to the livelihoods of peasant farmers.

The broad scope and counter-hegemonic nature of food sovereignty means that the concept is conceptualized to be malleable for local contexts. Lin (2017) have researched food sovereignty movements in China through an English school approach. He argues that the movement has been inspired by the transnational food sovereignty movement. However, in China, food sovereignty has gone through a process of ‘sinoalization’. As food sovereignty has travelled, scholars have kept a close eye to the concept and through which strategies the movement surrounding food sovereignty have applied the concept and sought to spread it.

In tracing how La Via Campesia worked to have food sovereignty introduced into official UN human rights papers, Dunford (2016), have argued that the introduction of food sovereignty was through an organized effort of Via Campesina that sought to avoid the concept being co-opted by actors that sought to strip the concept from some of its counter-hegemonic elements, such as the right to reject certain forms of food production. However, Dunford (ibid) also argues that food sovereignty is at risk to be marginalized by decision making bodies such as the UN. Other scholars have researched how the introduction of food sovereignty into official national development strategies is being the official developmental strategy for several states

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such as Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, however with different applications and results (McKay et al., 2014).

Despite the success in spreading the concept to be used in official settings and genres such as laws and human rights papers, scholars disagree about how the spread have been a sign of a successful counter-hegemony. Scholars have argued that the movement that advocates food sovereignty, have successfully avoided losing their voices to more powerful global north actors (Martinez-Torres and Rosset, 2010 and Dunford, 2016). However, the practical application of food sovereignty has been questioned in literature such as the ability for food sovereignty to be able to feed people effectively (Kappeler, 2013 and McKay et al., 2014), the ability for the concept to be truly counter hegemonic (Tilzey, 2019) and other scholars have pointed out the difficulty of conciliation the concept with such a diverse movement (Argawal, 2014).

One particular aspect that has sparked debate amongst scholars is what the sovereignty aspect of food sovereignty constitutes. In analyzing the Venezuelan project of food sovereignty, Schiovani (2015) argues that there are competing concepts of sovereignty within the food sovereignty project. She argues that these competing sovereignties are playing out within the realms of scale, such as the size of the productions such as small holder agriculture versus large scale industrial agriculture, geography, particularly within the rural-urban divide and within institutions, through organizations and rules.

This highlights a tension similar to the tension between food sovereignty and national sovereignty as discussed above. The tension between food sovereignty and food self-sufficiency. While food sovereignty does not preclude national food self-sufficiency, it is not synonymous with national food self-sufficiency (Borras et al., 2015). As Friedmann (2016: 677) argues food sovereignty usually refer to the distinction of farming as opposed to agriculture in which agriculture refers to when farming is penetrated by the commodification of agriculture. Food sovereignty as opposed to national food self-sufficiency, are a focus on peasant farming and redistributive policies and a bigger focus on community management of local resources (Rosset and Martinez-Torres, 2010: 169-170).

Indonesia has also been the subject of analysis from scholars seeking to analyze the concept. In particular due to the emergence of the food law in 2012 which were supposed to reify Indonesia’s national goal of achieving food self-sufficiency. In this law, it was emphasized that Indonesia should strive to achieve national food sovereignty. This law has caught the attention of scholars who have sought to analyze the consequences of the law, and how nationalizing the concept that were conceptualized to peasant centric has allowed the Indonesian government to use the concept as justification for creating more industrial agriculture, which runs counter to

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the vision of food sovereignty espoused by the food sovereignty movement (Neilson, 2019, Tisnanta et al., 2015 and Limenta and Chandra, 2017).

To summarize, the debates on food within IR and IPE is centered around the approach to economic structures. This thesis has approached the debates in terms of Cox’s (1981) conception of critical theory and problem-solving theory. In this view critical theories tend to criticize problem-solving theories for researching food as a commodity, and therefore the solution to food security issues has to be approached through market mechanisms.

This has piqued interest from scholars approaching food from a critical theory approach in food sovereignty and the food sovereignty movement as a concept that seeks to conceptualize food as beyond market forces. However, despite the successes of the food sovereignty movement on an international level, scholars have also researched the contradictions and issues present with the concept and its movement, particularly when translated to local contexts. This leaves open an avenue of research of the mechanisms that affect the concept when it enters local context.

2.3 Discourse, discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis

Analyzing the ‘VOIFS’ program will be conducted through a CDA, and this section will discuss discourse analysis and its theoretical approach. According to Milliken (1999: 225), discourse analysis is an analysis of discourse that are usually conducted through a post-structuralist or a social-constructivist epistemology and ontology. Discourse analysis refers to the analysis of discourse, however there are not a consensus on how to define discourse. This is arguably due to the interpretive nature of discourse analysis and the different ontologies and the subsequent different epistemologies that surrounds the concept (Halperin and Heath, 2017: 336-337).

Fairclough (1993: 63-64) argues that discourse should be viewed as language use as a form of social practice. The implication of this definition is that there is a dialectical relationship between discourse and social structures. This is a more materialist view of discourse than the traditional social constructivist or post-structuralist approach. In this view of discourse, discourse is constrained by social structures such as class and institutions, however, discourse is also instrumental in the constitution of these social structures.

Thus, while critical theory diverges from traditional Marxist theories in its analysis of ideology and commons sense, critical theory and subsequently CDA diverges from traditional discourse analyses in its insistence on analyzing discourse through a dialectical materialist lens. This reliance in critical theory is also posed as one of the central criticisms of the approach

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(Halperin and Heath, 2017: 339). However, the focus of CDA on discourse through a critical ontology and epistemology entails a focus on the material relations that produces discourse. Subsequently, what this entails epistemologically are that rather than seeking to analyze the power in discourse, CDA seeks to analyze the power behind discourse. This allows for the analysis to analyze how material structures affect discursive practice (Fairclough: 2015: 3).

Historical materialism being the ontological foundation for critical discourse analysis means that, through the lens of CDA and critical theory, discourse is a historical subject. A significant part of the ontological make up of CDA is subsequently what Fairclough (1993: 101-105) calls intertextuality. Intertextuality refers to how texts and discourse are made up of previous texts. Texts thus contains previous texts in it and new text recontextualize previous texts.

To summarize, the analysis of discourse has become a staple of IR and IPE. However, one of the major criticisms of traditional discourse analysis is how it tends to take for granted the material aspects of social and power relations. CDA, grounded in historical materialism and the Gramscian concept of hegemony, seeks to ameliorate these issues and provides a methodology that is focused on material relations. As food sovereignty and how food sovereignty is conceptualized is the main subject for the analysis, this thesis will not provide an explicit definition for the concept but rather treat food sovereignty as a discourse.

2.3.1 The discourses of food sovereignty

The topic of this thesis, the discourse of food sovereignty, has already been analyzed as discourse and this section will go over how food sovereignty has previously been analyzed as discourse. Scholars have researched the discourse surrounding the concept of food sovereignty. Jarosz (2014) has compared the discourse of food sovereignty to the discourse of food security. He argues that following the food crisis of 2007/08, the two concepts has been reframed in relations to each other. Both of the concepts are based in human rights discourses, however with food security emphasizing the need for food security through poverty reduction and food sovereignty emphasizing the need for local communities to manage local resources.

Concerning the discourse of food sovereignty in more local contexts, Gyapong (2015) has analyzed the discourse of food sovereignty in West Africa, a region where food sovereignty is not as well established as South-East Asia and Latin America. She argues that the peasant farming and industrial agriculture dichotomy that the food sovereignty often espouses, produces blind spots for the contradictions and developments occurring in peasant farming.

In the context of Indonesia, Neilson (2019) has analyzed the discourse of food sovereignty in Indonesia and the discourse surrounding the 2012 food law. According to Neilson (ibid),

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food sovereignty in Indonesia has been co-opted by the Indonesian state and changed to be a consolidation of national sovereignty, rather than the sovereignty of local communities which are often championed by the food sovereignty movement such as Via Campesina. This means that under the 2012 food law, food sovereignty has come to mean the right for the Indonesians state to form their own food policies. The consequence of this is that this does not compel the Indonesian government to hand over the right to manage the natural resources to the local communities.

To summarize, the discourse surrounding food sovereignty are fluid. The discourse was conceived in opposition to neoliberal policies and free trade that was argued to permeate the modern conception of food security and sought to construct a local and democratic management of local resources. The concept of food sovereignty has been fitted for local contexts and particularly the sovereignty aspect of food sovereignty has produced some friction between who the sovereign is within food sovereignty.

2.4 Food regime theory

FRT was first conceptualized by Friedman and McMichael (1989). The article argues that food systems within the IPE can be divided in periodical international regimes. International regimes being ‘rule-governed structure of production and consumption of food on a world scale’ (McMichael, 2009: 142). FRT departs from more traditional theories of international regimes in IR and IPE and is epistemologically and ontologically based in world systems theory and regulation theory. It argues that the international trade of food and agriculture has been instrumental in constructing the state system and the world system following post-colonialism.

Friedmann and McMichael (1989) argued that prior to their article, there was two previous food regimes, the first of which being in 1870 to 1914. This food regime, the colonial food regime, was defined by the contradiction between the rise of the state system and the capital accumulation gained though colonialism. The first food regime saw the rise of comparative advantage between European and settler states and it saw the beginning of agriculture as an industrial sector (Friedman and McMichael, 1989: 95-103).

The second food regime, the post-colonial food regime, spanned approximately from 1945 to 1970. In this food regime, following the end of the second world war, postcolonial states began to emerge and expel the previous colonial rulers. As the colonies previously grew specialized food that was meant for consumers, often in Europe and the United States, a new set of developmental strategies was put in effect. These strategies were based on developing effective and industrial forms of capitalism with the United States as the model. In the second

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regime the United States served as the breadbasket partially through aid, both for post-colonial states and European states through the Marshall plan. In this food regime, the green revolution had occurred in the United States, which pushed wheat prices down and making local production in post-colonial states less profitable. This also pushed developing states to seek out green revolution reforms of their own such as new seeds and new agricultural infrastructure (Friedman and McMichael 1989: 103-110).

The third food regime has become a matter of debate. One of the commonly used conceptions of the third food regime is corporate food regime as elaborated by McMichael (2009). McMichael (2006) argues that the corporate food regime is defined by a division of labor within the food regime where cheap and subsidized staple foods are grown and exported from the global north. Agriculture in the global south are thus relegated to more high value crops such as fruit or flex crops grown such as palm oil for export reason. In this food regimes food is also increasingly added to global value chains.

While FRT provides a useful insight in the macroeconomic trends of the international structures that govern food systems, the theory is lacking in its analysis of the question of how food regimes become hegemonic in local contexts. FRT in general does not have a theorizing on how a new food system is imposed to rural areas, often without or with very little violence (Brown, 2020). Brown (ibid) has sought to correct this flaw by applying a Gramscian analysis on how the structures of food regimes become hegemonic through consent building by local elites. In his article, Brown (ibid) traces how the food regimes were brought to the rural areas of India. He argues that in India, hegemonic mechanism of consent and coercions are paramount in ensuring that the rules and norms of food regimes travels to rural areas where the food is being produced.

Applying Brown’s (2020) Gramscian approach to food regimes, can help to ameliorate the criticisms of FRT posed by Friedmann (2016). Friedmann (ibid) has argued that in the three decades since the theory was presented FRT has lost much of its theoretical purpose. To remedy this, she proposes that the FRT should refocus itself as a theory of transition and that analyzing the transitioning of food regimes should be the main purpose of the theory. By applying Brown’s (2020) argument of utilizing the Gramscian concept of hegemony, this thesis will analyze how the current food regime became hegemonic in Indonesia and in turn, how this hegemonic order produced resistance.

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2.5 Critical Discourse Analysis, hegemony and food regime theory

As the section above has stated, this thesis will analyze the ‘VOIFS’ document using a CDA. The purpose of analyzing the ‘VOIFS’ program through a CDA is that it is a useful tool in analyzing how the consent aspect of hegemony is produced and reproduced (Fairclough, 1993: 93-95). The methodology chapter below will discuss why the ‘VOIFS’ program is a useful piece of data for analyzing the production and reproduction of hegemony. This section will discuss the synthesis between FRT and CDA.

Critical Discourse Analysis is a way that hegemony can be analyzed. CDA seeks to ground discourse analysis in the analysis of the power behind discourse and how this discourse seeks to produce or reproduce power relations, rather than to look at the power produced through discourse (Fairclough, 2015: 3). The concept of hegemony provides an important tool for understanding the power relations between discursive practice and social practice in the way that discursive practice is used to legitimize social practice (Fairclough, 1993: 97).

According to Fairclough (2015), discursive practice is historically situated. One of the central aspects of his framework for CDA is analyzing the discourse through a history of capitalism. This makes FRT a useful theory to use with a critical discourse analysis due to FRT being an analysis of food systems within the history of capitalism. By situating CDA’s focus on the history of capitalism in FRT, this thesis argues that this synthesis provides a useful tool in analyzing the production of power and social relations that has produced the discourse of food sovereignty in Indonesia.

This can also help to ameliorate one of the central criticisms of CDA; how to pick context (Blommaert and Bulcaen, 2000: 455-456). Blommaert and Bulcaen (ibid) argues that one of the central criticisms pointed at CDA is how the researcher pick what context matters. As will be elaborated below, a significant portion of a CDA is analyzing the context and the preceding discursive practice of the text. Critics have pointed out that this contextualization is produce a significant challenge in what context to use (ibid). I argue that by using FRT as the basis for analyzing the context of the use of food sovereignty in the ‘VOIFS’ document, it will provide a framework for the context that has already analyzed food sovereignty in its historicity.

As discussed above, Friedmann (2016) argues that FRT, in order to continue to be fruitful theory, needs to be a theory of the transitions of food regimes. The application of the of hegemony in FRT as proposed by Brown (2020) is a useful way of shifting the focus in FRT to transitions. Similarly, I argue that since CDA is an analysis with a focus of social change, analyzing social practice in its dialectical relation to discursive practice through an FRT

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approach to history will build analytical strength of the discursive practice and the social practice present in the transitioning of food regimes.

3 Methodology

Critical discourse analysis is comprised of both a theoretical and methodological framework. The chapter above have dealt with the theoretical aspect of CDA and how it can be used to analyze the production of hegemony within food regimes. This thesis will conduct the analysis using Fairclough’s three stage framework for CDA. This chapter will deal with how CDA will be applied in order to analyze the research question and the research puzzle.

The chapter will begin by introducing Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework and argue for why this framework has been chosen. The chapter will then explain the individual stages and how the analysis of stages is conducted. The final section of this chapter will discuss what data will be used in the framework and how the data will be interpreted.

3.1 Fairclough’s three-dimension framework for critical discourse analysis

The three-dimensional framework proposed by Fairclough (1993) is set up to analyze how text in discourse is produced, in order to analyze the relationship between discursive practice and social practice. The first dimension is discourse as text which focuses on the text itself. However, as elaborated above, this is not an analysis of the text itself in a Foucauldian sense in which the text is seen as producing power relations but rather a discursive practice and social practice in a dialectical relationship with each other (Fairclough, 2015: 6-7).

The purpose of CDA is as much analyzing how text create power relations as analyzing the power behind text and how the text, as a historical subject, is used to produce or reproduce hegemony (Fairclough, 1993: 85). Thus, the second dimension, discursive practice, has a focus on the context in which the text was created and the interdiscursivity of the text, e.g. how the text is made of previous discourses. The final dimension, social practice, focuses on how the text is translated into social practice (ibid).

The three dimensions that comprise this framework are constructed to analyze this process (Fairclough, 1993). The division of the framework into three dimensions comprising of different levels of analysis means that the dimensions require different forms of data. Fairclough (ibid) argues that the first two dimension differ in that the first, discourse as text is where formal features of discourse are most salient, where the productive and interpretive features are most present, the analysis will be dealt under the discursive practice.

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3.1.1 First Dimension, Discourse as text

The first dimension, discourse as text, is focused on the text itself. Fairclough (1993: 75) argues that this part of the analysis is centered on analyzing the formal features of the text. This thus involve looking at the words and phrases that are used in the text. This can be done with different foci depending on the scale of the textual analysis. The interpretive epistemology of CDA has been criticized by some scholars. These scholars argue that textual analysis is better served through a quantitative analysis (Fairclough, 2015: 23). However, interpreting how food sovereignty is framed in the ‘VOIFS’ program is necessary in answering the research question of how food sovereignty has been conceptualized by the SPI. This is due to CDA’s ontological approach to discourse in which discourse is a product of preceding discourse.

The scale in which the formal features of the text will be analyzed will be analyzed under the heading cohesion. According to Fairclough (1993: 77), cohesion is the second broadest approach to the analysis of the text and focuses on larger units of text, however still focusing on parts of text rather than the text as one whole. This is done to analyze the descriptions, deductions and definitions that characterizes the architecture of the text.

The analysis of the text will be conducted through this focus in order to understand the argumentative structure of the text. This is useful as this thesis will analyze how food sovereignty are referred to in the ‘VOIFS’ program. As elaborated in the literature review, food sovereignty is a concept that produces friction, particularly in terms of the question who the sovereign is. As this text is produced by the Indonesian Peasant Union (SPI), understanding how the text make arguments and appeals is a useful way of analyzing the ideological make-up of the text.

3.1.2 Second Dimension, Discursive Practice

The second dimension of Fairclough’s three-stage analysis are discursive practice. This dimension seeks to bring the analysis to the context of the text, i.e. to reveal what the power behind the discourse are. There are two primary ways that this will be conducted. The first way is by analyzing how the text was produced, distributed and for whom it was distributed. The second way is by analyzing the intertextuality of the text, how discourse and texts is made up of historical elements and previous discourses.

Fairclough (1993: 84-85) distinguishes between two different forms of intertextuality; manifest intertextuality and interdiscursivity. Manifest intertextuality refers to how texts might deliberately refer to other texts. Interdiscursivity refers to intertextuality through order of discourses. This thesis will analyze the discourse through interdiscursivity, focusing on how

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the interdiscursivity of food sovereignty as well as the interdiscursivity of the food discourse in Indonesia. FRT will be used as a tool to analyze the interdiscursivity of the text. As mentioned above, FRT provides a theoretical and historical framework of the relationship between food systems and capitalism.

FRT conceptualizes food sovereignty as a reaction to the neoliberal policies that sought to promote free trade and foreign direct investments in agriculture during the neoliberal food regime (McMichael, 2009: 141), FRT provides a useful tool in analyzing the historical, and subsequently the interdiscursive development of the food regimes. This dimension of the analysis will also analyze the history of food systems in Indonesia and how Indonesia has been affected by the development of food regimes. Subsequently, this dimension of the analysis will analyze how the historical development of food regimes has affected the discourse of food in Indonesia starting from the formation of Indonesia as a country.

Analyzing the interdiscursivity of the ‘VOIFS’ program is one part of analyzing the discourse as discursive practice, the second aspect is analyzing concretely how the text was produced, how the text was distributed and who the intended consumer of the text is. As will be discussed below, the production and consumption the text is what makes this text analytically interesting in relation to the production of hegemony of food regimes in Indonesia. This part of the analysis will be conducted after the analysis of the interdiscursivity of the text and will be more descriptive as this section will tie up how the interdiscursivity of international and Indonesian national food discourses has helped produce the text.

3.1.3 Third Dimension, Social Practice

The third and final dimension is discourse as social practice. Discourse as social practice seek to analyze how the discourse produce, reproduce or counter hegemony. Hegemony, as mentioned above, refer to the dialectic of governance and power through the mix of consent and coercion. The production and reproduction of consent are what is most interesting when analyzing hegemony.

An analysis of text can be used to analyze coercion through, e.g. implicit and explicit threats. However, analyzing how hegemony or counter-hegemony vies for the consent or tries to undermine the consent are a more analytically interesting facet of analyzing discourse through a critical lens (Fairclough, 2015: 3). The ‘VOIFS’ document in its relations to the wider discourse of food sovereignty sits in the intersection of hegemony and counter-hegemony, which will be elaborated upon in the section below. In looking at the hegemonic relations of the program, this section will also consider the Gramscian concept of transformismo, which is

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how the hegemony might pick up hegemonic concepts and movements in a way that neutralizes the counter-hegemonic properties of the concept (Cox, 1983: 173)

3.2 Data

This thesis will center the analysis around the ‘Vision of Indonesian Food Sovereignty 2014-2024’ document. However, CDA requires a deeper investigation into the context of the text, how it was produced and for whom it is produced. This requires that not only the text is analyzed but also the material and historical context as well. This section will thus discuss what data will be utilized and how it will be utilized in this thesis.

3.2.1 Vision for Food Sovereignty 2014-2024

The ‘VOIFS’ document was released on Serikat Petani Indonesia’s website on the 1st_{of May}

2014 (SPI, 2014). The document was released 2 years after the 2012 food law was passed, it was released a few months before the 2014 presidential election of Indonesia and around the end of the reign of President Yudhoyono (BBC, 2014). SPI is the only member of Via Campesia in Indonesia (Via Campesina, n.d.), however SPI is a coalition of several regional peasant unions of Indonesia (Purwato, 2013).

What makes SPI interesting is its position in both La Via Campesina and the Indonesian rural economy. SPI is an internationalist union that are active in the international struggle of peasants. The union previously held the chair of Via Campesina (Rosset and Martinez-Torres, 2010: 164). According to the union itself, SPI was founded in order to reach several strategic goals. These goals being to build education for peasants in Indonesia, to reclaim and to occupy land, to pressure the government into land reforms, to influence agricultural policy in Indonesia and join the struggle against international organizations such as the WTO, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (Purwato, 2013: 2).

The ‘VOIFS’ document thus becomes particularly useful in analyzing consent building within the corporate food regime in Indonesian rural areas. As the text was produced under the pretext of President Widodo granting Indonesian peasants their demands in turn for their support, this text is the product of consent building for hegemony in the Indonesian countryside.

This thesis will conduct a qualitative analysis on a document that is not in English but in Bahasa Indonesia. As the author of the thesis conducting the analysis does not speak Bahasa Indonesia, this text will be analyzed using a third-party translation of the ‘VOIFS’ document. The translator of the document is not a professional translator, but a native speaker of Bahasa

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Indonesia. There are different perspectives on how to properly make use of translated texts in qualitative research. One of these perspectives is the attempt to reach the unbiased or correct translation (Temple and Young, 2004).

There are several techniques available to ensure that the text is considered unbiased and once the translation can be considered unbiased, then there is no problem in the use of the text. However, others have argued that translation is not neutral and that power relations will permeate the analysis and certain cultural contours will be lost in translation. Thus, in analyzing a translated text, we have to be mindful of the cultural contours. To amend the weakness of the translation, the author and the translator have been in discussion over the translation of specific concepts and cultural references, which is particularly important due to the interpretive nature of CDA (Temple and Young, 2004).

3.2.2 Data for Discourse as discursive practice

While the ‘VOIFS’ program is the center of this analysis, Analyzing the ‘VOIFS’ program through Fairclough’s three-dimensional analysis requires the analysis of the interdiscursivity of the text, and subsequently the interdiscursivity of food sovereignty. Food sovereignty is a concept that arrived at Indonesia through international social movements, however food sovereignty’s meaning and value became inextricable from the Indonesian discourse on food (Neilson, 2019: 77-81). Another aspect of analyzing the discursive practice is analyzing how the text was produced and distributed (Fairclough, 1993: 78).

As CDA is historically situated (Fairclough, 2015: 41-44), analyzing the interdiscursivity that has permeated the ‘VOIFS’ program requires the analysis of how the discourse of food sovereignty has intersected with the discourse of food in Indonesia. In order to conduct this aspect of the analysis, this thesis will make use of a series of secondary and primary recourses. The secondary recourses will be previous analyses and research on food sovereignty and the Indonesian discourse of food as well as accounts by the Indonesian peasant union SPI published by SPI and Via Campesina. The primary recourses for this dimension will be using articles and blog posts released by the SPI relating to the ‘VOIFS’ program. By using this data, this thesis will be able to trace the interdiscursivity of food sovereignty and food discourse in Indonesia, allowing us to understand in better detail the power relations that is produced by the ‘VOIFS’ program.

To summarize, in order to answer the research puzzle of ‘how does SPI conceptualize food sovereignty’, this thesis will deploy Fairclough’s (1993) three-dimensional framework for

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CDA. The analysis will begin with the second dimension, discursive action, that will trace the interdiscursivity of international food sovereignty and Indonesian food discourses and analyze how these discourses intersect, i.e. how the international discourse of food sovereignty has been affected by the national discourse of food in Indonesia. This dimension will also analyze the material context in which the text was distributed and for whom it was distributed. This order has been chosen to make the first dimension, discourse as text clearer.

The analysis will go on to conduct the first dimension of the analysis. This dimension will look at how food sovereignty has been defined in ‘VOIFS’ program and analyze the argumentative structure of the text through a focus on the cohesion of the text. The final dimension of the analysis, discourse as social action will look at the hegemonic consequences of the text. This section will thus look at how the text has interacted with ideology and common sense and how this text has been mobilized for material consequences.

4 Analysis

This analysis will seek to answer the research question of how has the Indonesian peasant union conceptualized food sovereignty. This will be answered through an analysis using Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework. It will begin with the discursive practice dimension, analyzing the interdiscursivity of food sovereignty and food in Indonesia as well as analyzing the production and consumption of the ‘VOIFS’ program. This chapter will then conduct the discourse as text dimension of the analysis, analyzing the text itself. Finally, it will end with the social practice section, where it will discuss how the discourse has produced or reproduced hegemonic social relations.

4.1 Discourse as discursive practice

This section of the analysis will analyze the interdiscursivity and the production and consumption of the ‘VOIFS’ program. As this analysis will focus on the concept of food sovereignty, this analysis will begin by identifying how the discourse surrounding food sovereignty has travelled to Indonesia. This will be followed by analyzing the interdiscursivity of food in Indonesia and subsequently how food sovereignty intersected with the discourse of food in Indonesia. This section will end with an analysis of the production and consumption of the ‘VOIFS’ program by SPI.

One of the central aspects of Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework is that it is based in the idea that discourse is based in material relations. Subsequently, analyzing the discursive

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practice requires understanding its relation to social practice, i.e. its relation to historical hegemonic power relations (Fairclough, 2015: 15-18). This section of the analysis will use food regime theory as the analytical base for the material and institutional relations that has permeated, produced and reproduced hegemonic relations and discourse in Indonesia.

4.1.1 The interdiscursivity of food in Indonesia: Sukarno and the emergence

from the colonial food regime

Indonesia occupies an interesting space within the historical development of food regimes. It has since its foundation as a country, mostly unsuccessfully, sought to establish food self-sufficiency (Hamilton-Hart, 2019), despite Indonesia being a highly agricultural country. This is due to the high amount of agriculture that are based on export in Indonesia, which is emblematic of the corporate food regime (Pradadimara, 2015: 21). The ‘VOIFS’ program and its production as hegemonic alliance building, which will be elaborated upon in the second part of the discursive practice analysis, is an indication of increased contradictions in the corporate food regime.

McMichael (2009) argues, that the food sovereignty movement rose as a response to the neoliberalization of food systems. However, Neilson (2019) argues, the food sovereignty that are presented in the 2012 food law, which bears a strong interdiscursive relationship with the ‘VOIFS’ program, is changed to only mean self-sufficiency, which will be discussed below, shedding the redistributive and anti-industrial farming aspects of the concept. One of the conditions that has allowed food sovereignty to become a point of counter-hegemonic resistance in Indonesia is how food self-sufficiency is a significant part of Indonesia’s national identity (Neilson, 2019: 77). Since Indonesia’s declaration of independence in 1945, its first president, Sukarno, sought to establish national self-sufficiency in food, called swasembada in Indonesia.

Sukarno’s time as President of Indonesia, between 1945 and 1965 (Peluso and Rachman, 2008: 380), coincided with most of the post-colonial food regime that lasted from 1945 to 1970 (Friedmann and McMichael, 1989: 103). The rules and norms that was espoused in this food regime was part of a larger goal of the United States in consolidating states against communism during the cold war (Tilzey, 2019: 242-243). Indonesia had previously been a Dutch colony whose agriculture had been transformed for the capital gains of the Dutch empire, thus being fully immersed in the first food regime as this food regime was characterized by the colonialism. Indonesia’s agriculture was thus focused on export-oriented agriculture such as sugar and coffee (Pradadimara, 2015: 16)

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Sukarno was aligned with leftist movements in Indonesia and attempted to avoid entering the third food regime that was characterized by food aid from the United States and the introduction of green revolution technologies. This was done by seeking an independent food production through land redistribution and attempts to achieve swasembada (Pradadimara, 2015: 16-17, 19-20). Indonesian peasant movements had a significant role in forming Indonesia’s agricultural policies during Sukarno’s reign (Peluso and Rachman, 2008: 380-381). Sukarno, to this day, remains a revered character in Indonesian canon and is frequently referenced in contemporary discourse (Neilson, 2019: 78).

4.1.2 The discourse of food during the Suharto period: from the post-colonial

food regime to the corporate food regime

Despite his revered character, Sukarno was unable to maintain a stable hegemony in Indonesia. Sukarno was deposed through a violent pro-United States coup in 1965 and Indonesia’s second president, Suharto, was instated and presided as president from 1965 to 1998. Swasembada was still a central ideology for Indonesia. The government nationalized rice imports but failed to make Indonesian food production self-sufficient (Paramita, 2015: 19-20). Suharto halted the attempts of his predecessor to resist its introduction in the post-colonial food regime. He came into power during the green revolution, a series of developments in agriculture and agricultural policy that increased productivity through the introduction of new technologies and seeds (Friedmann and McMichael, 1989: 111).

During his presidency, Sukarno attempted to maintain hegemony by allying himself with peasant movements and the communist party. However, during the coup that ushered in the Suharto government hundreds of thousands of peasants were killed and the new order government subsequently illegalized peasant unions. Suharto established new hegemonic relations and sought to build alliances with wealthy landowners rather than peasant movements (Peluso and Rachman, 2015: 1981).

By the end of the 1960’s, most of the rice producing land was still owned by small peasants. However, the rice market and the fertilizers and seed that the farmers were allowed to use was tightly controlled by the government, and much of these seeds and methods were unknown and viewed with suspicion by the peasants. The Suharto administration contracted a series of foreign companies, such as Swiss, West German and Japanese, to provide support for achieving the green revolution in Indonesia and subsequently swasembada (Hansen, 1972).

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4.1.3 The discourse of food following the reformasi period: increasing

contradictions in the corporate food regime

Agriculture, being tightly controlled by the Indonesian government, changed when Indonesia joined the WTO. In order to be a member of the WTO Indonesia had to sign the Agreement on Agriculture (AOA) which it did in 1995. The AOA is a comprehensive agreement within trade in agriculture that seeks to end trade distorting policies such as tariffs on agriculture. The AOA is emblematic of the transition to the neoliberal food regime. It entered into force in 1995, around fifteen years after the third food regime and the rules that was in the agreement sought to consolidate the rules of the neoliberal trade-regime within agriculture through decreasing trade distorting policies (Hoda and Gulati, 2007: 12-40).

The AOA is a significant aspect of the corporate food regime, as (McMichael, (2005: 273) The AOA has major consequences for Indonesian agriculture. It opened Indonesia to food imports for the first time in the history of the country through removing their previously placed tariffs, and Indonesia also pledged to end its subsidies on agriculture (Tisnanta et al., 2015: 158-159).

Following the end of Suharto’s reign, Indonesia entered a new democratic period, known as the reformasi period (Pradadimara, 2015: 20-22). While Indonesia had signed the AOA, the state was unwilling to truly open its agricultural economy due to the strong ideology of

swasembada (ibid). Indonesia retained protectionist measures such as a state monopoly on rice

through the state-owned company Bulog. However, the Asian financial crisis of 1998 put further strain on agricultural protectionism. Indonesia was forced, through structural adjustment programs, to end its monopoly on rice, resulting in a flurry of import which depressed the national price of rice and thus local farmers was disincentivized from growing rice. Indonesia attempted to reassert state intervention in rice, and it achieved swasembada in rice successfully by 2004 (ibid).

Following the food price crisis of 2007/2008 Indonesia managed to avoid much of the steep price hike of staple foods due to a particularly bountiful harvest and because the crisis happening around the time of the harvest in Indonesia as well as strong import control from Bulog. Indonesia’s ability to weather the crisis solidified the ideology of protectionism and

swasembada as the way that Indonesia should reach food security (Pradadimara, 2015: 21-22).

To summarize, the purpose of this account has been to argue that despite the changing hegemonic power-relations that has been emblematic of Indonesia’s turbulent history following the end of colonialism, the ideology of swasembada has stood resolute and

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subsequently been conditional for actors to maintain hegemony in Indonesia, thus constituting common sense for Indonesian culture. However, the path to swasembada has been fluid and changing throughout its history. The section below will discuss food sovereignty’s introduction into Indonesian ideology and how it has been affected by the common sense of swasembada.

Swasembada, as will be discussed below, are also mobilized in the ‘VOIFS’ program. The

section below will discuss how food sovereignty travelled to Indonesia and interacted with

swasembada.

4.1.4 The interdiscursivity of food sovereignty and its penetration into

Indonesia

The consolidation of corporate agriculture created resistance as peasant farming became increasingly marginal to industrial agriculture. A strong opponent of the consolidation of peasant farming into industrial agriculture is Via Campesina. Via Campesina emerged for the expressed purpose of resisting the development of peasant farming into industrial agriculture as peasants began feeling this marginalization following the neoliberal development in the 1980’s (Rosset and Martinez-Torres, 2010). The formation of resistance of Indonesian peasants was slower to materialize due to repression from the new order and the lack of a nationalized peasant’s union. However, already in 1996, the North Sumatra Peasant Union was in contact with Via Campesina to join the global network of farmers. In 1998 the Indonesian peasant’s union, SPI, was formed and took over the North Sumatra Peasant Union as the formal member of Via Campesina in Indonesia (Purwanto, 2013: 2).

Food Sovereignty entered Indonesian national parlance in 1998 with the formation of the Indonesian Peasant Union (SPI) the same year. Following the end of Suharto’s regime, the various peasant unions were quick to organize into a coalition under the umbrella of the Indonesian Peasant Union (Purwanto, 2013: 1-2). As McMichael (2009) argues, food sovereignty is a reaction to the contradictions produced by the neoliberal food regime. This was felt by Indonesian peasants which felt the increasing threat of the neoliberal reforms to food that was espoused by the AOA. The union was subsequently quick to join the transnational peasant union coalition of Via Campesina which had coined the term food sovereignty and adopted it.

Via Campesina is a transnational coalition that were organized to resist neoliberal reforms to food systems that was emblematic of the 1980’s (Rosset and Martinez-Torres, 2010). Via Campesina’s seminal concept, food sovereignty, which became its central demand and rallying cry, was coined in its modern conception in 1996. This was only one year after the

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implementation of the AOA, in a meeting parallel to the World Food Summit hosted by the FAO. Via Campesina coined the conception of food sovereignty as alternative to neoliberal trade policies and as a concept that emphasize the rights of different societies to define their own way producing food (ibid: 160).

4.1.3 The intersection of swasembada and food sovereignty discourses in

Indonesia

As argued above, the Indonesian ideology of swasembada is common sense in the Indonesian national identity. This was expressed by Sukarno when he made a speech proclaiming the importance of Indonesia achieving self-sufficiency in food: “Why bother talking about political freedom if we don’t have the freedom to manage our own rice, and always have to beg for help to buy rice from neighboring nations?” (1952, quoted in Neilson, 2019: 77). While not explicitly mentioning Swasembada or self-sufficiency, he is equating the right, or the sovereignty, to manage Indonesia’s own food with freedom. As discussed above, the self-sufficiency of food in Indonesia have been at the forefront of most of the president’s political priorities. Food self-sufficiency is key to defending the bangsa, often translated as the nation of Indonesia (ibid: 78). According to Neilson (ibid), the bangsa is a highly emotive subject in Indonesian discourse. The current sitting president, Joko Widodo, wrote in the foreword to a book that the bangsa is something living and breathing and able to feel hunger and pain.

Following the financial crisis and the rise of nationalism in Indonesia, the president at the time, Yudhoyono, set out an ambitious goal of reaching food self-sufficiency in 2014. Through this goal, President Yudhoyono was able to pass the 2012 food law. The 2012 food law marks the first time that food sovereignty is mentioned in national policy in Indonesia (Neilson, 2019: 80). In the 2012 food law, food sovereignty is defined as

the right of the state and nation… to independently determine food policy that ensures a right to food for the people, and that ensures rights for the community to determine a food system appropriate to its local resources (quoted in Neilson, 2019: 80-81).

This definition mentions the rights of communities to “determine a food system appropriate to its local resources”, a definition of food sovereignty that are close to the definition of food sovereignty as articulated by Via Campesina (Purwato, 2013: 10-11).

There is also equal weight given to the role of the state and the community in the definition of food sovereignty in the law, however, as Neilson (2019: 82-83) argues, the food law uses the concepts of food security, food sovereignty and food self-sufficiency together several times,

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effectively making them interchangeable and turn them into a single objective. The law does not provide a definition for food availability. Neilson (ibid) argues that the inclusion of food sovereignty into the law strengthens the case for government intervention in agriculture and to assert legitimacy during the rise of nationalism in Indonesia.

To summarize, this section has argued that the discourses surrounding food sovereignty has been in counter-hegemony to the neoliberal developments in the corporate food regime. This discourse has been very amenable to the Indonesian discourse of swasembada. However, the Indonesian discourse of swasembada has been strongly influenced by the historical developments such as the neoliberal policies from the corporate food regime. Subsequently, the introduction of food sovereignty into the 2012 food law posed more a case of

transformismo, rather than counter hegemony as the law equates food sovereignty with food

self-sufficiency, shedding the redistributive and counter-hegemonic aspects of food sovereignty. As the section below will argue, the ‘VOIFS’ program is an attempt to reassert the counter-hegemonic aspects of food sovereignty in Indonesia.

4.1.5 Serikat Petani Indonesia and the production and distribution of Vision

of Indonesian Food Sovereignty 2014-2024

The sections above have analyzed the interdiscursivity of food sovereignty and food in Indonesia and how the two orders of discourse have intersected. This analysis argues that the ‘VOIFS’ program is a product of these discourses. This section of the analysis will discuss the production and the intended consumption of the ‘VOIFS’ program. The methodology chapter above has argued why this program is significant. This section will argue why the ‘VOIFS’ program is a product of the interdiscursivity elaborated above.

As will become apparent in the next dimension below, the interdiscursivity of food sovereignty in the ‘VOIFS’ program has been greatly affected by two discourses. One discourse is the discourse of food sovereignty as a counter-hegemonic framework that seeks to promote peasant farming as an alternative to industrial agriculture. The second discourse is food sovereignty as an extension of national and state sovereignty. SPI is an actor existing in the material reality as an Indonesian peasant union and being a member of Via Campesina, which means that the union is beholden to both discourses.

SPI aligned itself with the incumbent president as of writing, President Widodo. As discussed previously, part of the SPI’s support of President Widodo was relegated on his support in realizing the program stated in the ‘VOIFS’ program. This signals that President Widodo sought to create hegemony by allying himself with SPI. SPI has significant pull in

Whose sovereignty? : Food Regimes and Food Sovereignty in Indonesia

Whose sovereignty?

Food Regimes and Food Sovereignty in Indonesia

Jacob Schantz Klausen

Acknowledgements

Abstract

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

1.1 Aim and research question

1.2 Method and material

1.3 Delimitations

1.4 Outline

2. Theory and literature review

2.1 Critical theory

2.2 debates on food within international food and international political

economy

2.2.1 Food sovereignty and food security

2.3 Discourse, discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis

2.3.1 The discourses of food sovereignty

2.4 Food regime theory

2.5 Critical Discourse Analysis, hegemony and food regime theory

3 Methodology

3.1 Fairclough’s three-dimension framework for critical discourse analysis

3.1.1 First Dimension, Discourse as text

3.1.2 Second Dimension, Discursive Practice

3.1.3 Third Dimension, Social Practice

3.2 Data

3.2.1 Vision for Food Sovereignty 2014-2024

3.2.2 Data for Discourse as discursive practice

4 Analysis

4.1 Discourse as discursive practice

4.1.1 The interdiscursivity of food in Indonesia: Sukarno and the emergence

from the colonial food regime

4.1.2 The discourse of food during the Suharto period: from the post-colonial

food regime to the corporate food regime

4.1.3 The discourse of food following the reformasi period: increasing

contradictions in the corporate food regime

4.1.4 The interdiscursivity of food sovereignty and its penetration into

Indonesia

4.1.3 The intersection of swasembada and food sovereignty discourses in

Indonesia

4.1.5 Serikat Petani Indonesia and the production and distribution of Vision

of Indonesian Food Sovereignty 2014-2024