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Society for Urban, National and Transnational/Global Anthropology
Invited - Oral Presentation Session
Alicia Reigada
University of Seville, Spain
As in different global agrifood enclaves, the changes and tensions derived from the integration of the family farm model into the global agrifood supply chains, and the ethnic and gender substitution of the workforce have been accompanied by significant conflicts in Andalusian intensive agriculture (Southern Spain). Based on qualitative research of the intensive cultivation of strawberries, this paper examines the main strategies of politics of scale that converge from the beginning of the 21st century: the strategies of large distribution chains, of growers’ associations, and of the Andalusian class trade unionism and the self-organization of immigrants.
To analyse the conflict among the different social actors, the paper looks at the variety of forms that the politics of scale takes: how the large distribution chains act at the global scale; the way in which growers’ associations create local, national and global alliances (from the local lobbyist organisation, Freshuelva, to the national growers association like GOAG [Coordination of Farmers and Livestock Organisations] or UPA [Union of Small Cultivators and Farmers], and the global movement La Vía Campesina); and how the class trade unionism and immigrants seek cross-local solidarities (e.g. the integration of SOC [The Fieldworkers Union of Andalusia] in La Via Campesina or the coalitions between immigrant workers and The Platform Against the Immigration Act in a context of strikes and sit-ins). The analysis explores how the different processes and strategies deployed within the politics of scale become central to understand the production/distribution conflict and the producers/working class conflict.