Capitalist food regime and the agrifood problem: a critique of political economic and post-developmentalist understandings of the agrarian/peasant question


Thesis Type: Doctorate

Institution Of The Thesis: Middle East Technical University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Department of Sociology, Turkey

Approval Date: 2018

Thesis Language: English

Student: Atakan Büke

Supervisor: MEHMET CİHAN ECEVİT

Abstract:

The proliferation and differentiation processes in critical approaches on agrifood relations since the late 1980s can be seen as the rise of critical agrifood studies. When compared to the peasant studies of the era between the late 1960s and the late 1980s, critical agrifood studies signifies a radical theoretical reorientation in the field that especially becomes apparent in the post-developmentalist turn manifested in the contemporary agrarian/peasant question formulations. On this ground, by focusing on the last three decades, this study argues that the contemporary literature on the agrarian/peasant question is characterized by a divide between political economic and post-developmentalist understandings, which can also be seen as an impasse. This study, through a critical analysis of the implications of the neoliberal restructuring of agrifood relations for the agrarian/peasant question in social theoretical terms, claims that reformulating food regime as capitalist food regime on the basis of Marxism understood as a critical theory of society, and the agrarian/peasant question as the agrifood question of capitalism can provide a way out of this impasse by bringing the strengths of both political economic and post-developmentalist frameworks together.