The Neoliberal Food Regime: Neoregulation and the New Division of Labor in North America
Gabriela Pechlaner Department of Social, Cultural and Media Studies, University of the Fraser Valley
Gerardo Otero Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Simon Fraser University
Abstract
We
undertake a comparative investigation of how neoliberal restructuring characterizes
the third food regime in the three North American countries. By contrasting the
experience of the two developed countries of the United States and Canada with
that of the developing country of Mexico, we shine some empirical light on the
differential impact of neoliberal regulatory restructuring on the division of labor
in agriculture within the North American Free Trade Agreement region. In
particular, we investigate these countries’ agricultural production markets,
trade, and food vulnerability—with an emphasis on Mexico—as analytical points for
comparing and contrasting their experience with this neoliberal restructuring.
We start with a synthesis of food- “neoliberal food regime.” We then discuss
our case-study countries in terms of food vulnerability and resistance in
Mexico, their differential relationships to trade liberalization, and what
these trends might mean for the evolution of the neoliberal food regime. We
conclude that, while dominant trends are ominous, there is room for an alternative
trajectory and consequent reshaping of the emerging regime: sufficient bottom-up
social resistance, primarily at the level of the nation–state, may yet produce
an alternative trajectory
https://www.academia.edu/1048900/Gabriela_Pechlaner_and_Gerardo_Otero_2010_The_Neoliberal_Food_Regime_Neoregulation_and_the_New_Division_of_Labor_in_North_America_Rural_Sociology_75_2_179_208
The
Third Food Regime: Neoliberal Globalism and Agricultural Biotechnology in
North America
Gabriela Pechlaner and
Gerardo Otero*
The
agricultural sector is currently being shaped by two powerful dynamics as many nations reorganise their national agriculture according
to free trade and other supranational agreements while new agricultural
biotechnologies are increasingly adopted. This interrelationship between
regulatory change and genetic engineering appears set to form the basis of a new food regime. In this article,
we compare the role of national and international regulations relating to
the technology, and the impact of local resistance to it, in the advanced capitalist countries of Canada and the USA and the developing
country of Mexico. Similar to food
regime perspectives, our study concludes that neoliberal regulatory reorganization is an important component of the evolving food regime.
Further, Mexico bore
the brunt of the technology’s negative social impacts, demonstrating how it
exacerbates existing inequalities between developed and developing nations. Resistance movements in the country have been sufficient
to call into question the inevitability of a homogenous reorganization of agriculture, however. Evidence suggests
that such resistance could modify, or even derail, this technology’s role in
individual nations, and consequently, in the unfolding food regime as a
whole
https://www.academia.edu/1048912/Gabriela_Pechlaner_and_Gerardo_Otero_2008_The_Third_Food_Regime_Neoliberal_Globalism_and_Agricultural_Biotechnology_in_North_America_Sociologia_Ruralis_48_4_351_371
