Feeding “the commons”: rethinking food rights through indigenous ontologies

Abstract

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to open possible new domains for thinking the relationship between commons and food rights by trying to respond to the challenges of alternative ways of experiencing humans-nature interdependence. The idea of a self-standing individual separated from nature – which underpins both the economicist view of “common goods” as resources, and the Western definition of human rights as something owed to people – not only prevents us from seeing what is at play in countless local struggles worldwide, but it also limits the possibilities of a plural redefinition of food rights. In order to let alternative rationalities emerge, it is necessary to set aside the onto-epistemological framework that sees society as separated from nature, body from mind, subject from object, and the individual from the collectivity. By approaching food commons through the lens of indigenous senses of co-belonging among people, land, and food expressed in relational ontologies, my intention is to bypass both the resource-based, and the sociocentric view of the commons, and see them as life made in common. Finally, I look at the possibilities offered by indigenous relationality to expand notions of food sovereignty and decolonize food rights.