Redressing the Corporate Cultivation of Consumption: Releasing the Weapons of the Structurally Weak

Abstract

Corporate control of the global food system has resulted in greater global availability of highly processed, packaged and very palatable unhealthy food and beverages. Environmental harm, including climate change and biodiversity loss, occurs along the supply chains associated with trans-national corporations’ (TNCs’) practices and products. In essence, the corporatization of the global food system has created the conditions that cultivate excess consumption, manufacture disease epidemics and harm the environment. TNCs have used their structural power – their positions in material structures and organizational networks – to establish rules, processes and norms that reinforce and extend the paradigm of the neoliberal corporate food system. As a result, policy and regulatory environments, and societal norms are favourable to TNC’s interests, to the detriment of nutrition, health and environmental outcomes. There is hope, however. Power, of which there is many forms, is held not just by the TNCs but by all actors concerned about and connected to the food system. This paper aims to understand these power dynamics, and identify how structurally weak, public-interest actors can release their agency and work to achieve positive structural change. Such an analysis will help understand how the status quo can be disrupted and healthy and sustainable food systems created. The paper draws from the health governance and social movement literature, examining the Doha Declaration on the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement and Public Health, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), and the Divestment movement. These cases demonstrate the many ‘weapons of the weak’ that can, against all odds recalibrate structural inequities. There is no one approach to transforming the corporate food system to become a healthy and sustainable food system. It involves coalition building; articulation of an ambitious shared vision; strategic use of multi-level institutional processes; social mobilization among like-minded and unusual bedfellows, and organized campaigns; political and policy entrepreneurs, and compelling issue framing.

The Political Economy of Healthy and Sustainable Food Systems: An Introduction to a Special Issue

“…These ‘weapons of the weak’ include coalition building, formulating ambitious and shared visions, strategically using multi-level institutional processes, civil society mobilization and organized campaigns, entrepreneurship, and compelling issue framing. 88 Similarly, Moodie et al, drawing lessons from tobacco control, put forward suggestions for building powerful coalitions to counter the political activities of the ultra-processed food industry, including a much stronger role for state intervention, and diversifying the core public health training and skill set to include digital and political strategists, advocates, investigative journalists and lawyers. 27 In order to safeguard regulatory space for governments within the global trade regime, Russ et al call for substantially expanding the participation of government health agencies and civil society organizations in the CAC.…”

Discursive Power: Trade Over Health in CARICOM Food Labelling Policy

“…A growing literature in the study of global governance and international political economy describes the power of transnational corporations (Cutler et al, 1999;Falkner, 2008;Green, 2013;Hall and Biersteker, 2002). Corporate influence in food and agri-food governance has been examined both by political economists (Clapp and Fuchs, 2009;Falkner, 2009;Fuchs, 2005;Fuchs and Kalfagianni, 2009) and by those who address corporate power and conflict of interest from a public health perspective (Baum et al, 2016;Moon, 2019;Thow et al, 2019;Friel, 2020;Milsom et al, 2020). The vast array of spaces and approaches where influence happens means that empirical detail around exact pathways of power operationalization can be lacking.…”

Measuring the Commercial Determinants of Health and Disease: A Proposed Framework

“…6 Moreover, there is a need to apply expanded theorizing to more fully assess the practices of commercial actors, alongside the "deeper societal factors" 10 that sustain and promote these practices. For this purpose, some scholars have linked CDoH to wider concepts of power 11,12 and complex systems thinking. 7 As a contribution to this growing scholarship, we begin by arguing that traditional public health approaches lead to a narrow conceptualization of CDoH focused on the production and consumption of specific unhealthy products.…”

“…The purposes of this article are to further enhance the analytical and practical value of this term and to support the deeper development of “concepts, theories, frameworks, and methods for the study of CDoH.” 2 As de Lacy-Vawdon and Livingstone observe, “social, political, commercial, and economic structures and relations of CDoH are under-theorized.” 6 Moreover, there is a need to apply expanded theorizing to more fully assess the practices of commercial actors, alongside the “deeper societal factors” 10 that sustain and promote these practices. For this purpose, some scholars have linked CDoH to wider concepts of power 11 , 12 and complex systems thinking. 7 …”

“…i He Y, Shang C, Chaloupka F. The association between cigarette affordability and consumption: An update. PLoS One 2018; 13(12): e0200665. https://journals.…”