Critical Latin American agroecology as a regionalism from below

Abstract

ABSTRACT Latin America has long been a hot bed for social movement organization and innovation, and for dialogue among different types of knowledge (‘dialogo de saberes’). This has included dialog between academic knowledges framed by Western science, popular and ancestral peoples knowledges and wisdoms, and so-called critical thought from global and Latin American revolutionary traditions. From these conditions, we postulate that a specifically Latin American agroecology has emerged from these dynamics, as a sort of regionalism from below. While dominant academic writing recognizes that agroecology is simultaneously a science (in the Western sense), a movement, and a practice, it is the emergent Latin American version that is the most politically charged and popularly organized. We postulate that the joint forces of Latin American rural movements, intellectuals and scientists have uniquely forged a significant form of regional integration and regionalism from below, and that an agroecological variant of Critical Latin American Thought underpins this regionalism. This contribution uses a survey of selected Latin American agroecologists to illustrate this regionalism and its conceptual content.