Towards an Agroecology of Knowledges: Recognition, Cognitive Justice and Farmers’ autonomy in France.

Coolsaet, Brendan [UCL]

Most collective agroecological initiatives in Europe today are built around a plurality of knowledge systems. Going beyond the well-documented instrumental goals of this knowledge-plurality, this paper highlights another, perhaps less obvious, objective: the pursuit of cognitive justice as a form of cultural recognition. The subordination of alternative farming to conventional agriculture leads to the misrecognition of peasant communities, which is exacerbated in today’s ‘knowledge society’. Challenging conventional agriculture hence requires both status equality between different forms of doing farming and an active engagement with different ways of knowing farming. Cognitive justice, a concept originating from postcolonial and inter-cultural theory, encompasses not only the right of different knowledge forms to co-exist, but entails an active counter-hegemonic engagement across them. Using an example of participatory maize breeding in France, the paper illustrates how peasant movements in Europe organize what could be called an ‘agroecology of knowledges’ to reclaim autonomy from both market and state.