Toward thick legitimacy: Creating a web of legitimacy for agroecology

Abstract

Legitimacy is at the heart of knowledge politics surrounding agriculture and food. When people accept industrial food practices as credible and authoritative, they are consenting to their use and existence. With their thick legitimacy, industrial food systems paralyze the growth of alternative agricultures, including agroecology. Questions of how alternative agricultures can attain their own thick legitimacy in order to compete with, and displace, that of industrial food have not yet attracted much scrutiny. We show that both agroecological and scientific legitimacy grow out of a web of legitimation processes in the scientific, policy, political, legal, practice, and civic arenas. Crucially, legitimation often comes through meeting what we call 'credibility tests'. Agroecologists can learn to navigate these co-constituted, multiple bases of legitimacy by paying attention to how credibility tests are currently being set in each arena, and beginning to recalibrate these tests to open more room for agroecology. Using a schematic of three non-exclusive pathways, we explore some possible practical interventions that agroecologists and other advocates of alternative agricultures could take. These pathways include: leveraging, while also reshaping, the existing standards and practices of science; extending influence into policy, legal, practical, and civic arenas; and centering attention on the ethical legitimacy of food systems. We conclude that agroecologists can benefit from considering how to build legitimacy for their work.

Pathways to agroecological management through mediated markets in Santa Catarina, Brazil

“…As of April 2016, the number of certified producers has more than tripled, with 909 certified organic/agroecological family farms in Santa Catarina (5 percent of family farmers in the state) (Ministério da Agricultura, 2016 (Tagliari, 2006, Schmitt Filho et al, 2013, Alvez et al, 2014, Schröter et al, 2015.…”

Building student capacity to lead sustainability transitions in the food system through farm-based authentic research modules in sustainability sciences (FARMS)

“…Experiential learning approaches provide inquiry-based learning experiences in real-world settings where the learner actively makes firsthand discoveries. Compared to rote or didactic learning such as ' cookbook' laboratory exercises, experiential models may motivate students to retain and pursue further knowledge (Handelsman et al, 2004;Bentley, 2012;Sobel, 2004;Dewey, 1938).…”

“…FARMS engage students at multiple dimensions through field research activities that allow students to make meaning of their surroundings through direct experience in a structured learning environment. This aspect of FARMS reflects a heuristic approach to education in which each learner individually and socially constructs systems of meanings based on contextual experiences (Dewey, 1938;Driver et al, 1994). In contrast to focusing on the delivery of isolated facts and theories, the design and implementation of FARMS focus on the experiences of students and the changing food system contexts in which they live.…”

Midcourse Corrections?

“…In their paper on creating a web of legitimacy for agroecology, de Wit and Iles (2016) argue that the legitimacy (accepting something as credible and authoritative and expressing it widely) accorded to industrial agriculture is still quite strong. They argue that industrial agriculture's legitimacy needs to be offset by developing agroecology's own thick legitimacy, where "thick" means that it arises from multiple threads in scientific, policy, political, legal, practice, and civic arenas.…”

“…But no matter how compelling scientific findings might appear, they are not adequate by themselves to engender legitimacy (de Wit & Iles, 2016). Agroecology needs to be incorporated into the cognitive and cultural concepts that people hold about food.…”