Civil Society Resistance Research Articles

Inequities in the green transition: anti-mining protests in the European periphery

Supposed green technological fixes to the climate crisis necessitate the mining of raw materials such as lithium en masse, spurring the proliferation of mining globally and the associated social and ecological harms. Major economies are engaged in a resource race for critical raw materials that are indispensable inputs for electric vehicles and digital technologies in the green transition and fourth industrial revolution (Kalantzakos, 2020; Kalantzakos et al, 2023). As this race materialises, so too has resistance and contestation on the proposed mining sites. This article engages with the critical literature on ecologically unequal exchanges (Hornborg, 1998; 2014; 2016) and extractivism (Acosta, 2013) to explore protracted civil society resistance to two lithium mining projects in rural and agrarian regions of Serbia and Portugal. The European Union is pursuing a dual agenda of decarbonising personal use transport and resource autonomy in an increasingly shifting geopolitical order; in turn a massive effort for onshoring mining activities is underway in Europe. The author argues that recent policy enactments by the European Union for onshore mining produces ecological and social harms in rural and agrarian areas and is illustrative of an unequal ecological and economic exchange. Agrarian and subsistence livelihoods are affected in pursuit of green technological solutions, highlighting the contradictory character of the green transition under capitalism and ultimately advocates for a degrowth position.

CВІТАНОК БІЛОРУСЬКОЇ НЕЗАЛЕЖНОСТІ ТА УЗУРПАЦІЯ ВЛАДИ РЕЖИМОМ ОЛЕКСАНДРА ЛУКАШЕНКА

Despite the geographical and cultural proximity, the contemporary history of Belarus is poorly represented in Ukrainian historiography. The study of the socio-political processes that took place in the Republic of Belarus after it became an independent country is necessary to understand the reasons for the failure of its nationally oriented course in 1991–1994, the Lukashenko regime’s coming to power and its subsequent transformation into a state unfriendly to Ukraine and the Euro-Atlantic bloc. After gaining independence during the «parade of sovereignties» in 1988–1991, Belarus began to experience the processes of national revival of the Belarusian language and culture and democratisation of social and political life, initiated by the national conservatives from the Belarusian Populat Front (BPF), but already in the fourth year of independence, the above-mentioned processes were curtailed and the Republic of Belarus, headed by the permanent president Alexander Lukashenko, became known as «Europe’s last dictatorship». Nevertheless, mass opposition protests have been taking place almost throughout the entire period since 1994, from the so-called Minsk Spring to the large-scale protests of 2020. The article generally chronicles the anti-authoritarian resistance of civil society in Belarus in the 1990s, examining the formation and activities of Zianon Pazniak’s Belarusian People’s Front party, the confrontation between different branches of power against the backdrop of Alexander Lukashenka’s first victory in the presidential election and his subsequent usurpation of power, human rights violations, fraud during the presidential election, regime repression of the opposition and its activities. A special focus on the Belarusian Popular Front is due to the importance of this party as the most significant opposition force during the period of independent Belarus’ existence.

NEPAD and the Challenge of Africa’s Development:

Abstract:The critical necessity of development for Africa in the 21ˢᵗ century is an issue around which there is considerable consensus. There is, however, little agreement on the nature of the crisis, the required development framework, and the ‘desired state’. In the context of the debate, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) has been promoted by its authors and sponsors as Africa’s development blueprint for meeting its development challenges. Much of the criticism of NEPAD has focused, procedurally, on the lack of consultation in its drafting, and, paradigmatically, on its neo- liberal content, the same set of policy instruments that have damaged Africa over the last 20 years. The latter underscores the sense of betrayal that comes through civil society resistance to NEPAD. The question though is this: Why would a group of African leaders, who seem genuine in their concerns, take responsibility for such policy framework? The paper seeks an explanation in the complex interaction between a set of developments since 1980: the neo-liberal hegemony at the level of state policymaking, internal policy atrophy, coercive power of compliance, but equally the new constituencies (class forces) that have been thrown up in the last two decades – within the state, economy, and importantly the civil society in sub-Saharan Africa. Much of the latter is premised on the ‘death of the emancipatory project’ and the dominant politics of the petty bourgeois class in Africa. It is in this sense that we understanding NEPAD as a class project, hence, its import.Introduction

The emotional life of rupture at Cambodia's Lower Sesan 2 hydropower dam

This article aims to extend and deepen our understanding of how emotions figure in experiences of major nature-society disruptions or “rupture.” Cambodia's Lower Sesan 2 hydropower dam is an example of rupture, which refers to dramatic, adverse, and disruptive episodes that ripple across scale. Against a historical backdrop of land enclosures and dispossession, the dam sparked significant community and civil society resistance. This emotionally charged campaign emphasized that the dam and associated resettlement would erase the impacted communities’ deep customary relationships to the area. Although some community members ultimately refused the resettlement package and moved to customary lands near their flooded village, the majority accepted resettlement. We explore the emotional dimensions of these communities’ experiences, finding that rupture is an inherently emotional process, within layered historical processes of change and violence. The intense emotions that such processes evoke can spark action within the “open moment” (Lund, 2016) that episodes of rupture create; yet the outcomes are highly unpredictable within the asymmetrical political and economic settings that underpin nature-society rupture.

Don’t Touch My Constitution! Civil Society Resistance to Democratic Backsliding in Africa´s Pluralist Regimes

AbstractAnalyzing civil society resistance to elite‐led democratic backsliding in Africa, the article argues that the non‐militant, civil society‐based transitions experienced in the 1990s left a legacy of a pro‐democracy cleavage that is mobilized when central constitutional rights are threatened. Building on insights from social movement theory, the paper argues that the conduct of multiparty elections at regular intervals provides an opportunity for contestation over constitutional rules, and the historical legacy of pro‐democracy movements provides a mobilizing structure for civil society to organize for the protection of constitutional rights. The theoretical argument is illustrated by a comparison of the democratic trajectories in Zambia and Malawi. In both countries, incumbent elites’ have attempted to remain in power through constitutional revisions. However, processes of executive aggrandizement have been stalled by civil society mobilization that again have resulted in incumbent defeat and electoral turn‐overs. Recent waves of democratic backsliding suggest that the autonomy of civil society from political parties may be a key factor for the ability of civil society to challenge autocratization. Malawi’s civil society has maintained a high degree of autonomy but in Zambia, the close cooperation between civil society and the Patriotic Front (PF) and the resulting cooptation of key civil society actors have resulted in a process of autocratization.

Forging their path in the Brussels bubble? Civil society resistance within the domestic advisory groups created under the EU trade agreements

Academic and policy interest in civil society participation in the European Union’s trade policy has been growing since the late 1990s. We analyse civil society’s engagement with the Domestic Advisory Groups (DAGs)—consultation mechanisms established by the European Commission at the implementation stage of its free trade agreements. While the Commission’s formal rationale for the DAGs is partnership with civil society, in fact this relationship involves a marked power and resistance dynamic. We focus on civil society’s agency and resistance, develop a conceptual framework laying out different possible types of resistance, and empirically demonstrate the wealth of both overt and subtle resistance practices employed by DAG members. Most of this resistance is (moderately) comprehensive and directed against the DAGs’ rationalities and technologies. While showing that DAGs are deeply contested, our study also provides a nuanced analysis of resistance with particular attention for divisions between business and non-business members.

International criminal law and civil society resistance to offshore detention

ABSTRACT Since 2014, six communications have been made to the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) at the International Criminal Court (ICC) regarding Australia’s offshore detention of asylum seekers. Applying Green and Ward’s framework of civil society resistance to state violence, this article explores how those communications drew on international criminal law’s legal and expressive functions to label, uncover and sanction Australia’s offshore detention regime. Article 15(1) of the Rome Statute created a communicative space for civil society to engage directly with the Prosecutor and indirectly with the Australian Government, the Australian public and the international community. Through Article 15(1), civil society employed expressive messaging to resist offshore detention, prior to any overt action from the ICC or the Prosecutor. Fundamental to this resistance was international criminal law’s normative expressive function; that is, the ability of international criminal law to articulate and reinforce norms and values to build support and solidarity among the international community. In 2020, the OTP declined to formally open a preliminary examination into the situation in Australia. While some aspects of this decision had the potential to undermine the objectives pursued by the communications, other aspects were used by civil society to continue to advocate against offshore detention.

Limits on the Press and Civil Society during the Maximato

In October 1931, Governor Bartolomé García Correa and Socialist Party activists violently closed Carlos R. Menéndez’s Diario de Yucatán for being reactionary. Defenders of the Diario denounced the governor for illegally silencing the voice of what today we would understand to be civil society. After a seventeen-month struggle in the courts, the national press, and in Mexico City’s bureaucracy, Menéndez prevailed. This article closely examines the conflict, using regional and national archives and abundant contemporary press coverage, paying careful attention to discursive expression of socioethnic inequalities. It reveals significant limits on the regional independent press and the concept of civil society during the formative period in postrevolutionary Mexico known as the Maximato (the 1928–35 era dominated by Plutarco Elías Calles as hyperexecutive or Jefe Máximo). During the Maximato, the postrevolutionary state employed authoritarian measures to centralize power. The Maximato state, however, could not govern without acknowledging both the Constitution of 1917’s classical liberal civil rights, such as freedom of the press and guarantees of associational life, and the revolutionary political legacy of popular action against “reaction.” In the Yucatecan case, the muzzling of the regional independent press was not simply top-down illiberalism. Yucatecan socialists believed it would help create a more egalitarian and inclusive socio-political order to supplant civil society. The Diario’s exclusivist definition of civil society and the national press’s personal attacks on García Correa reflected widespread beliefs that people of indigenous and African descent were incapable of taking part in civic life. While Menéndez eventually prevailed in the courts, it was due more to his economic and cultural capital and prominent Mexico City allies than to legal protections for press freedom or civil-society resistance. The case helps us to understand how the latter two varied so significantly over place and time in postrevolutionary Mexico, and why Tocquevillian notions of civil society require careful qualification when applied to poor, overwhelmingly indigenous regions of Mexico.

To Freire or not to Freire: Educational freedom and the populist right‐wing ‘Escola sem Partido’ movement in Brazil

This article addresses key topics of academic freedom and critical pedagogy during a time of right‐wing populist politics. The rise of the far‐right politician Jair Bolsonaro to Brazil’s presidency in 2019 was accompanied by a vow to eradicate any vestige of the ideas of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire from the country’s schools. Bolsonaro’s campaign was supported by ultra‐conservative groups that have as their core mission a traditional Christian and anti‐Communist educational agenda. At the forefront of these groups is the influential and conspicuous ‘Escola sem Partido’ (ESP) movement that has forcefully campaigned against Freire’s critical pedagogy across the country and promoted physical and online abuse of teachers since 2014. This article asks how Freire’s philosophies can be an ally in the struggle for democratic education in the current political climate in Brazil. It employs a method of dialogical narrative to bring Freire’s theories and critical methodology to life and test their potency against the ESP educational philosophies. It initially employs Freire’s core ideas to examine the ESP policies and parliamentary bills. In the second part, it analyses documents and online content produced by civil society resistance to ESP pressures. The findings show the vitality of Freire’s pedagogical philosophy to empower oppressed communities in their demands for quality education. The narrative concludes by demonstrating the vital role of the critical consciousness process and of Freire’s pedagogy of freedom to support ongoing struggles by teachers and communities to block ESP attempts to abolish critical thinking in Brazilian public education.

Contesting ‘EU as Empire’ from Within? Analysing European Perceptions on EU Presence and Practices in the Mediterranean

In a context of ongoing popular resistance in the Arab world, the question of how this has affected the view of the EU’s role in the region by European stakeholders has not yet sufficiently be inquired into. How is the EU – and its presence and practices particularly – perceived within its own core, by its policymakers on one hand, and by the European civil society it also involves in its policies, on the other? Institutional stakeholders see the space the EU occupies in the Mediterranean as rather limited with other powers growing in the region. In contrast to this, resistance of European civil society to the current EU role is growing. Not only is the EU now criticized of massive human rights violation itself, specifically in the area of migration, but its whole development model is called into question, including within Europe itself. At the same time, civil society presents a strong alternative imagination of the EU as a non-colonial presence whose practices are based on a universal human rights approach with a strong focus on socio-economic rights/social justice and the inclusion of a variety of actors. European Union, Mediterranean, civil society, democracy, human rights, resilience

Adapting Coercion: How Three Industrialized Nations Manufacture Vaccination Compliance

This research examines the development of vaccination policy in Britain, the United States, and Australia to begin to understand the different forms of coercion that industrialized states utilize to achieve vaccination compliance from the majority of their citizens. This research applies a comparative-historical analysis of the three countries listed, using a combination of primary and secondary documents. The different degrees of compulsion in the vaccination policies of Britain, the United States, and Australia is explained through an analysis of the path-dependent ways that each nation adapted coercion in response to civil society resistance. Each nation has moved up and down a continuum of coercion searching for a policy that balances overcoming passive noncompliance without engendering active resistance. Arriving at different balancing points between these two objectives, the three nations have now institutionalized policies with different degrees of coercion. This research shows that vaccination policy is not just created top-down by the state, but through an ongoing interactive process with citizens and civil society. Furthermore, as vaccination is a "wicked problem" that faces ongoing civil society resistance, states will need to perpetually adapt the coerciveness of their policies into the foreseeable future.

¿Por qué volver a las raíces de la Economía Ecológica?

El Instituto de Estudios Ambientales de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, sede Bogotá, en asocio con el Instituto Cinara de la Universidad del Valle, hemos tenido a cargo la organización de los tres primeros encuentros internacionales de Economía Ecológica realizados en Colombia. Estos encuentros han estado dirigidos a tratar diversas temáticas de este novedoso campo de estudio. El primer encuentro internacional, realizado en el año 2007, estuvo dedicado a analizar las perspectivas y avances en la enseñanza y aplicación de la Economía Ecológica en Colombia. El segundo encuentro en 2010 estuvo dirigido a revisar la evolución de los enfoques teóricos de la Economía Ecológica y sus avances metodológicos. En el año 2013 se llevó a cabo el tercer encuentro y en esa oportunidad se centró en el análisis de los conflictos ecológicos distributivos y los procesos de resistencia de la sociedad civil en diferentes países latinoamericanos.

Reading the ‘uncivil’ in civil society resistance to transitional justice in Côte d'Ivoire

As with many other contexts civil society in Côte d’Ivoire is not a space or set of actors and practices neatly distinct from the state. Political parties, politicians and party political agendas infuse civil society activism and ensure that being a civil society actor is a contested identity which can be leveraged for diverse and competing political projects. This paper is based on qualitative fieldwork with civil society actors who position themselves as ‘resisting’ the state-sanctioned transitional justice process following the 2010–2011 election violence and armed ousting of former President Laurent Gbagbo. Claiming and mobilizing their civil society identity such actors seek to create distance from what they claim is an illegitimate state and to lend credence to their project of resistance, read by some Ivoirian and non-Ivoirian commentators as mere political machinations by those who refuse to give up power and behave democratically. However, reading this ‘uncivil’ behavior is a complicated empirical and analytical task. In this article we explore the potential of analyzing such ‘disorder’ from the perspective of an expansion of the public in Côte d’Ivoire and how such a study of an actually existing civil society can challenge any notion of an easy instrumentalisation of civil society to serve the ends of transitional justice.

State and Civil Society Relationships in Indonesia: A society-oriented Reading in Search for Democratic Space

This paper has shown how the relationship between state and civil society in Indonesia is part of the problem of building democratic government. The problems in Indonesian society is the polycentric nature, by which civil society organisations or popular organisations are being fragmanted and often unorganised. This has made it increasingly difficult to transform various conflicts into more political through democratic institution. At least there are four major problems:The first problem is when a strong civil society faces an ineffective state tactic of governmentality. This tends to stimulate civil society resistance and conflict; or it fosters coexistence through alternative governmentality techniques where the relationship between the state and society is in conflict. The second problem is when a weak civil society faces and effective state. This tends to trigger practices of money politics which are embedded in patronage and clientelism. The third problem can be found in the situation where weak civil society faces an ineffective state which tends to stimulate the emergence of extralegal governmentality practiced by thugs, militia, vigilantes, and paramilitaries. The fourth problem is reflected in the situation where a strong civil society faces an effective state.

Manchukuo’s Contested Sovereignty: Legal Activism, Rights Consciousness, and Civil Resistance in a “Puppet State”

AbstractThough often viewed as a mere stepping stone in Japan’s gradual early-twentieth-century military and economic encroachment on China, the “puppet state” of Manchukuo was also paradoxically characterized by a high degree of legitimizing legal rhetoric. While its political realities generally failed to reflect these idealized foundations, the latter did provide significant space for legal and other forms of civil society resistance, including by Chinese legal professionals. The germinal resistance movement of these actors demonstrates a complex relationship between the concepts of sovereignty, law, and national affiliation, both in the context of state repression and in the overlapping demands of competing identities. Though various theoretical understandings of resistance help to illuminate this activism, it is perhaps best seen as a radical challenge to the regime’s power to define the norms and exceptions of political and social life.

Struggling for an adaptive strategy? Discourse analysis of urban regeneration processes – A case study of Enning Road in Guangzhou City

Over the last two decades, China has experienced urban redevelopment at an unprecedented scale and speed. The state-sponsored property-led redevelopment pattern has been widely deployed as dominant urban regeneration strategy in many Chinese cities. Meanwhile, more and more attention has been paid to the protest and resistance of civil society to the tremendous demolition and eviction during the implementation of such strategies. Investigating the process, content and context of urban regeneration strategies in China provides fertile ground to understand the public participation process, specific plight and challenge of decision-making in urban regeneration in China. This reflects the logic and trend of urban governance in China within existing regulatory practices and institutional settings during the transformation period. As the understanding of strategy and problem are concomitant to each other, problem framing in urban regeneration is pivotal to understand urban regeneration strategies. Starting from this point, the object of this paper is to explore what the problems are, how they are defined and perceived by different actors, what strategies are promoted as solutions, and how they are legitimated or excluded. As problem framing is social construction through discourse by different actors, such close relationship of discourse and problem proves the necessity of undertaking discourse analysis as research approach to understand problem framing, also the process, content and context of urban regeneration strategies.To understand specific problems and challenges of urban regeneration strategies implemented in China’s inner cities, this study inquires a controversial and well known redevelopment project called Enning Road, which has been the first “pioneer” in terms of comprehensively redeveloping old town areas in Guangzhou since the last decade. This project has received tremendous criticism, and it can be characterized by a continuous adjustment of the unstable strategies that were applied and a frequent stagnation due to social resistance from 2006 to 2015. It will demonstrate how different discourse coalitions are formed by the government, scholars, journalists, residents and NGOs and other stakeholders. For this purpose, the paper will discuss their shared interests, beliefs or rationalities and the way they use storylines to frame problems. In this context, a lot of local knowledge and expert knowledge is activated and utilized to construct those storylines. The urban regeneration process of Enning Road involves continuously changing problem definitions and continuous experimentation, translating into emergent adaptive strategies. It also shows the interplay between different ways of problem framing, and the complex interaction between problem framing and strategy promotion.

Book Reviews

Global Gentrifications: Uneven Development and Displacement, Loretta Lees, Hyun Bang Shin and Ernesto Lopez-Morales (eds). Bristol, Policy Press, 468 pp., £27.99, ISBN 987-1-4473-1349-8Global Gentrifications is a compilation of studies which interrogate the notion of gentrification, providing a new foundation for understanding urban transformations across the globe. The authors point out that most theorisations and conceptualisations of gentrification have been shaped by an Anglo-American view, with limited attempts to take into account experiences outside of these regions. Responding to this issue, the book includes various lenses to view the urban transformations outside of the 'usual suspects', discussing how gentrification is framed in particular contexts and drawing from the new literatures on comparative urbanism and policy mobilities.The book is a compendium of rich empirical illustrations of gentrification, with chapters organised in alphabetical order of the authors, rather than being structured by region, or theme. The editors point out that regional groupings were not the most effective for revealing theoretical and conceptual insights, and that this also avoided indicating any regional or city hierarchies. The editors make no apologies for the varied nature of the chapters - a reflection of the varied career stages, disciplines, educational training and native languages of its authors. It would be impossible in a review of this length to do justice to the range of rich empirical case studies and contributions included, but while it is unusual for a review to make reference to each chapter in turn for an edited volume, I do so to illustrate the diversity of material discussed in this book.In Chapter 2, insights from Athens at the micro-scale show how gentrification takes a specific spatial form; a reflection of the Athenian socio-economic context where gentrification is 'punctuated' and 'scattered' in space. In Chapter 3, the case of slum gentrification in Lisbon explores displacement and resistance. Insights from Abu Dhabi in Chapter 4 reveal the impact of policies causing gentrification in the city centre. Favela gentrifications in Rio de Janeiro are discussed in Chapter 5, comparing the discourses of favela residents and newcomers and the influence of state-led urban restructuring. Moving to India in Chapter 6, analysis of the factors affecting unequal urban transformation and the distinct processes of development in Indian cities are discussed. Chapter 7 explores how Cairo's gentrification has involved a proliferation of gated developments, and how the particular conditions of the city do not encourage conventional processes of gentrification.Chapter 8 focuses on the various forms of gentrification in Israel and how its geographical spread does not necessarily follow the same pattern as in Anglo-American cities, taking place across metropolitan regions. Urban renewal programmes in Seoul are the focus of Chapter 9, analysing the impact of aggressive residential renewal, as well as anti-gentrification activities. Chapter 10 considers gentrification in Pakistan, and how it is linked to city networks and the influence of civil society resistance. In Chapter 11, a study of gentrification processes in Buenos Aires explores how in some Latin American cities gentrification has become widespread and integrated into wider urban transformations. Chapter 12 provides an examination of the state-led privatisation of public land in Taipei, and how this is creating new forms of social inequality. Chapter 13 then examines local political contexts of gentrification in Istanbul, comparing two neighbourhoods from different municipalities showing how even within the same city processes of gentrification can have different outcomes. …

Then and Now: Haitian Journalism as Resistance to US Occupation and US-Led Reconstruction

During the US occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934, Haiti’s Fourth Estate, the Haitian press, stood in solidarity with ordinary Haitians and became a fixed feature of the resistance in Haiti to foreign occupation for nineteen years. The alliance featured conservative publications like Le Matin , traditional commercial papers like Le Nouvelliste , and radical antioccupation ones like Haïti-Intégrale and La Presse . Despite their differing political persuasions, owners of the dozens of newspapers in Haiti challenged the Haitian state and the United States for the loss of Haitian sovereignty, and many went to jail for it. In 2015, an alliance between Haiti’s leading media organizations, the ANMH and AMIH, has emerged in the face of a new US-led interference, this time in the country’s reconstruction. The threat to the country’s sovereignty by the international aid community has come at a time when political and economic institutions remain weak. Haiti’s press stands out as an institution willing to hold an open debate about Haiti’s recovery and development. This role is significant given the country’s fledgling democracy and persistent socioeconomic crises brought on by two decades of political upheavals and natural disasters culminating with the 2010 earthquake. The narrative in Haitian newsrooms and radio programs on the ground echoes the narratives of 1915. The strategies employed by Haiti’s alliance of media organizations today, both mainstream and alternative, harkens back to the solidarity on display between Haiti’s radical and conservative press when Haiti faced occupation in 1915. The censorship and repression of the Haitian press is evident today, but when faced with an external threat to national self-determination, Haiti’s media continues to act as an advocate for the Haitian people.

Legal Activism and Rights Consciousness in a 'Puppet State': Law in Manchukuo's Civil Resistance, 1931-1945

Though often viewed as a mere stepping stone in Japan’s gradual early-twentieth-century military and economic encroachment on China, the “puppet state” of Manchukuo was also paradoxically characterized by a high degree of legitimizing legal rhetoric. While its political realities generally failed to reflect these idealized foundations, the latter did provide significant space for legal and other forms of civil society resistance, including by Chinese legal professionals. The germinal resistance movement of these actors demonstrates a complex relationship between the concepts of sovereignty, law, and national affiliation, both in the context of state repression and in the overlapping demands of competing identities. Though various theoretical understandings of resistance help to illuminate this activism, it is perhaps best seen as a radical challenge to the regime’s power to define the norms and exceptions of political and social life.

GFT - SYNTHESIS - The uneasy relationship between international trade and agriculture

In his 2006 book, Food is Different, Peter Rosset posited we “get agriculture out of the [World Trade Organization] WTO”. This contention, which is the rallying cry for the Food Sovereignty movement, is that the WTO should not have any purview over agriculture and by extension food systems. Getting the WTO out of agriculture encompasses not only dismantling the 1994 Agreement on Agriculture, which governs both global food trade and extends to national food policies, but also nullifying the entire suite of WTO agreements that apply to various aspects of agriculture, including the Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), and the Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMS) (see Burnett & Murphy, 2014). For activists, policymakers, and scholars who take a firm stance of resistance to the WTO, there is no room for compromise with the institution. From this standpoint, the WTO cannot be transformed into a legitimate space to govern international food trade. The underlying concerns motivating much global civil society resistance to agriculture being governed under the WTO are well documented in the papers in this collection and were discussed at length by participants at the workshop in Waterloo.