Global Food Social Movements:Initial reflections on participant observation with the International Civil Society Mechanism

1. Standing in solidarity — maintaining distance?
Exploring methodological and ethical dynamics of
participatory research with food social movements
DISCUSSION/ROUNDTABLE
Josh Brem-Wilson, International Centre for Participation Studies,
University of Bradford, UK
Annette Desmarais, International Studies Program, University of
Regina, Canada
Jessica Duncan, Centre for Food Policy, City University, London, UK
Hannah Wittman, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Simon
Fraser University, Canada

2. Global Food Social Movements:
Initial reflections on participant observation with
the International Civil Society Mechanism
Standing in solidarity — maintaining distance?
Exploring methodological and ethical dynamics of
participatory research with food social movements
Jessica Duncan
Centre for Food Policy, City University, London
May, 2012

3. Structure of this Presentation
• Context: Participatory turn and post-food crisis restructuring of global food
security governance
• New mechanism to facilitate participation of civil society organizations
• Participant observation: review of process
– Snowball and gatekeepers
– Language
– Blogging
• Key challenges
– Language
– Relations of power
– Researcher –SM dynamics
– Gender politics
– Protecting particpants
– Self-censorship
– Time

4. Context
• Between 2005 and 2008, the world’s staple food pirces soared
to their highest levels in 30 years: for the first time more than
1 billion people were chronically hungry
• Prices peaked in June 2008, and prices fell back 33% in 6
months
• Food riots broke out in more than 20 countries
• Rising food costs in 2010-11 pushed nearly 70 million people
into extreme poverty
• Result was a call for enhanced coordination and cohesion
across food security policies at the global level
– Marked by two trends: Country-led plans and increased participation

5. Committee on World Food Security
• Now: Emerging consensus that the CFS is the forum for discussion
and debate on global food security governance
• 1974: Established upon recommendation of the World Food
Conference
– Response to 1970s food crisis
• 2009: Reform process initiated to address calls for greater
coordination and cohesion of food security policies
• 2010: First of the Renewed CFS
• Vision: “constitute the foremost inclusive international and
intergovernmental platform for a broad range of committed
stakeholders to work together in a coordinated manner and in
support of country-led processes towards the elimination of hunger
and ensuring food security and nutrition for all human beings”

6. Civil Society Mechanism
• CSM facilitates the participation of CSOs in the
CFS, including input in negotiations and
decision-making
• Provides a space for dialogue between a wide-
range of civil society actors
• Open to all CSOs working on food security
• Executive: Coordination Committee (CC)
comprised of 41 focal points from 11
constituencies and 17 sub-regions

7. Sub-Regions
(Total of 16, x1 focal point each)
North America South East Asia
Central America & Caribbean Central Asia
Andean Region Oceania
Southern Cone Southern Africa
Western Europe West Africa
Eastern Europe East Africa
West Asia Central Africa
South Asia North Africa
Pacific
Constituencies
(Total of 24, x2 focal points each)
Agricultural & food workers NGOs
Artisanal fisherfolk Smallholder family farmers (4 focal points)
Consumers Urban poor
Pastoralists Women
Indigenous Peoples Youth
Landless

8. Site of Inquiry
• Diversity of actors engaging in food security who
do not necessarily share the same approaches,
ideologies, understanding of the problem,
solutions, culture, spirituality or language
• How will these actors come together to
effectively engage in the reformed CFS?
• How will diversity be managed?
• To start to answer these question I set off to
undertake participant observation of the CSM

9. Key Points
• Reform of a UN Committee to include CSOs as
official participants
• CSOs developed mechanism to coordinate
their participation in the Committee
• Policy approach: focus on how civil society
actors participate in global policy making and
the implications of this

10. Participant Observation

11. Accessing the Field:
Snowball and Gatekeepers
• Food Sovereignty
Forum, Rome November
2009
• UKFG
• FoodSecure Canada
• Civil Society Consultation
(CFS36) Rome, October 2010
– Note
taking, interpretation, general
support, blog
• Snowballed….

12. Language
• CSM works in three
languages:English,
French, Spanish
• English mother tongue
is useful since much of
the communication and
negotiations happens in
English
• Fundamental role of
interpreters: voice

13. Blog
• Transparency
• Public profile
• Exposure
• Remaining a-political
• Networking tool
• Motivation
• Archive of thinking and process

14. Key Challenges

15. Speaking “Social Movements”
• Modes of communication
• Texture of communication
• Important = how you
communicate this
• Note taking
– What gets recorded, what
gets left out?
– What are the implications
of this?
– How does this translate to
reports and documents?

16. Relations of Power
• CSM seeks to give priority and voice to those most affected
by food insecurity
• As a researcher, a lot of attention needs to be given to
relations of power
• Multi-site ethnography shifts attention to multiple domains
to cultural productoin challenging the priviledge position
of the ethnographers perspective
• Reflects the multi and interacting sites where CSOs engage
in global food security governance
• Power balance shifts: CSM meeting vs Gathering vs FAO
meeting
• Need for constant reflection on language, gender, class,
health, mobility, religion, age across multiple sites

17. Researcher – CSO Dynamics
• Social movements hold power in relationships with
researchers (need to maintain trust):
– Hand out a lot of work (note taking, facilitation, organizing,
administration) = less time for research (trade off)
• Researcher wears many hats:
– CFS37- CSOs walked out of food price volatility policy
roundtable: left me behind- respected role as researcher-
left someone on the inside
– GGWP- missing out on the election of the pastoralist focal
points for Declaration Working Group- potential to
challenge the process
– “Go do your magic” – researcher as link between CSOs and
negotiators

18. Gender Politics
• Food is female: production, feeding, service
• As a woman it can sometimes be easier to
forge bonds with women activists (cultural,
religious, historic, political, social reasons)
• CSM strives for gender equality
• Movements working with CSM have strong
gender politics
• CSOs are engaging in an arena that is not
feminist
• Being a young female researcher in (male-
dominated) elite settings influences access:
raises questions of what is appropriate
• Tension with other generations of feminists

19. Protecting Participants
• Despite the public and
elite nature of their
engagement at the UN,
these are radical actors
in their communities
and they face serious
challenges and threats
– Death threats
– Exile

20. Choosing what to share
• Impetus for this panel
• How to balance loyalty, solidarity and politics with
academic analysis?
• Working within a fragile and politically sensitive
process
• Too much critique could be used to de-legitimise the
process and to break trust with social movements
• There is a lot to learn from the process, especially from
what goes wrong
• What is appropriate to share and with whom?

21. Time
• Time = Methodological tension with
ethnography: how long do you need to be in
the field?
• Managing time in the field
• With global-level research, there are usually
multiple-sites to be explored and this spreads
time out more thinly
• Time to keep up to date on the issues

22. It’s what you do
• Commitment to transparency and openness
• Work hard
• Respect actors, reflect on relations of power – shifting contexts
• Remember your purpose
• Reflect on the dynamic roles researchers play in these
movements
• Reflect on shifts between
participant/observer/analyst/friend/expert
• How to transition to “expert”- what are the implications of
this?

23. View Presentation: foodgovernance.com