Framing the Global Food Crisis: La Via Campesina and the Politics of Resistance. Alana Mann University of Sydney, Australia

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1 Framing the Global Food Crisis: La Via Campesina and the Politics of Resistance Alana Mann University of Sydney, Australia Abstract This paper explores how La Via Campesina, the world s largest independent social movement, employs the politics of resistance and reaction in drawing international attention to what it believes are the root causes of the global food crisis. Comparing the movement s response to the crisis with the framing of the issue in selected international news sources, this paper will explore how counterframes built around the concept of food sovereignty have strengthened claims to legitimacy and enhanced La Via Campesina s credibility within the public sphere. Introduction When Henry Saragih was named by The Guardian as One of the 50 People Who Could Save the Planet (Vidal, January 5, 2008) it may have been the first time many readers had heard of the social movement he leads, La Via Campesina ( the peasant s way ). A global alliance of peasant, family farm and landless peoples movements with constituents from 56 countries, this movement of movements struggles for international support and the attention of global media. It competes with tens of thousands of other groups and civil society organizations (CSOs). While the global financial crisis may have focused attention on corporate failures and fallout, the world s poor are the true losers, again. News of an attendant global food crisis has lead to a resurgence of interest in agrarian reform. While this attention is welcomed by peasants, rural workers and organizations such as Via Campesina, they remind governments that this situation is not the product of a sudden natural disaster but the fruit of decades of policies of traditional liberalization and of the vertical integration of production, processing and distribution by corporate agriculture (La Via Campesina, 2008). If hunger riots in 40 countries have drawn the attention of the public opinion, the food crisis is not a new phenomenon. (European Farmers Coordination, May 12, 2008) The campesino or peasant has remained marginalised and dismissed in arguments about the global economy, despite social problems including hyper-urbanisation, the need for sustainable agricultural systems and vocal protests from social movements such as La Via Campesina. [Farmers] viewed from the towns look like subsidised malcontents, chronic polluters and occasional rioters; they belong to an untouchable lobby, they forment disorder, they are backward looking, archaic and incapable of adapting to the world of the young (Bove & Dufour, 2002, p.2). 1

2 It is this image of the peasant farmer that the Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform, initiated by La Via Campesina and the Food First Information and Action Network (FIAN), desires to subvert. Communication campaigns act as framing devices. Successful framing leads to the development of an action generating discursive community (Pan & Kosicki, 2001). A discursive means of achieving political potency in influencing public deliberation and an integral part of the process of building political alignments, framing is not limited to news coverage or diffusely defined public opinion. Successful framing requires the political skills to initiate discourse that binds diverse interest and actors together. Framing is vital to strategic action. When venues of the public sphere act as a stage for performance by elites, analysis of the frames presented provides a means of reading the relations between communication and power. The economic and social resources available to frame sponsors - those who seek to impose their frames on topics of interest to them - are central to the ability of a frame to enter and achieve prominence in news discourse. The building of particular collective meanings through international campaigns has been well-documented (Smith et. Al, 1997; Finnemore & Sikkink, 1998; Florini, 2000; Khagram et. al, 2002; Joachim, 2003; Price, 2003). However little of this research focuses on the strategic framing carried out by network actors. The neglect of attention to power relationships in framing studies, many of which rely exclusively on sourcing patterns, has lead some researchers to call attention to the definition of frames, frame sponsorship and framing contests. To reduce frames to issue positions neglects how issues are defined (Carragee & Roefs, 2004). To consider framing as just one more content element, against which to measure effect, risks continuing to ignore basic power questions (Reese, Gandy Jr, & Grant, 2001). Where do frames originate and how do they spread? What economic and cultural resources are available to sponsors to promote frames? Who loses from framing decisions? As part of a broader doctoral study that addresses these issues, this paper is concerned with two questions. How are problem definitions, causal interpretations and proposed solutions to the global food crisis framed by La Via Campesina? Secondly, are these frames reproduced in so-called elite and prestige news sources? Through analysis of press releases and other campaign communications, this research suggests that a human-rights approach to development is just one of the framing devices applied La Via Campesina. Offering a new model for agrarian reform the movement uses narrative effectively to mobilise constituents and link local issues to the global context. As a frame sponsor, La Via Campesina and the broader network it comprises builds social capital through alliances and actively works towards reframing the image of the peasant within the global political economy. La Via Campesina and the Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform In our network society (Castells, 2000) CSOs play a significant role. John Clark (2003) describes three types of organisational form relevant to civil society: the unitary form (U-form), the traditional firm that evolved from the industrial revolution with its civil society parallel being the large charity or church; the multi-divisional form (M-form) typified by the Transnational Corporation (TNC), its civil society equivalent being large CSOs such as CARE or Greenpeace; and the network or N- 2

3 form, represented by advocacy-oriented CSOs that emphasise strategic partnerships. Clark includes Friends of the Earth International, Oxfam and Amnesty in this group, along with umbrellas of national mass movements including La Via Campesina (Clark, 2003, p. 110). Based in Indonesia, La Via Campesina is comprised of approximately 150 organizations actively campaigning for food sovereignty in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. While it continues to play a leading role in promoting agrarian reform at World Social Forums, Latin American Social Summits and anti-ftaa (Free Trade Area of the Americas) meetings, the movement remains marginalised within the public sphere where debates over the global food crisis have been dominated by political and economic elites. Representing a broad agenda including sustainable agriculture, farmers rights, the protection of biodiversity and opposition to Genetically Modified (GM) foods and industrial agrofuels, La Via Campesina launched the Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform as a bridge that unites local movements in promoting the right for people and nations to define their own agricultural and food policies according to the needs and priorities of their own communities. Its objectives include: Promote solidarity with all peasants, women and men, whose human right to food is violated or who are victims of persecution due to their struggle for agrarian reform; Facilitate internationally the lobby work in order to find wide support so that the new agrarian reform can take a top position on the agendas of agrarian policies, human rights and development cooperation, nationally and internationally; Jointly seek the dialogue with the intergovernmental organizations - including the international financial institutions, about an agrarian reform based on human rights; Exchange information and experience between different participating organizations and movements. (Economic Justice News, 2001) The initiatives of supranational institutions including the World Trade Organization and the World Bank are considered by many civil society actors to have failed (Rosset, 2004; Desmaris, 2003; Woods, 2001). Land occupations in Brazil, Mexico s Zapatista Rebellion in 1993 and the Zimbabwe food riots of 1998 were key events signaling a new era of Land Reform from Below (Rosset, Patel et al., 2006). On October , La Via Campesina joined with the Food First Information and Action Network (FIAN) to launch the Campaign. United under the banner Food, Land and Freedom peasants joined human rights activists in Asia, the Americas and Europe in mobilizations, land occupations and other events to demand the right to land and security of land tenure as essential to the human right to food. The holistic concept of food sovereignty places the interests of peasants and small-scale farmers at the centre of the debate: Food sovereignty is the RIGHT of peoples, countries, and state unions to define their agricultural and food policy without the dumping of agricultural commodities into foreign countries. Food sovereignty organizes food production and consumption according to the needs of 3

4 local communities, giving priority to production for local consumption. Food sovereignty includes the right to protect and regulate the national agricultural and livestock production and to shield the domestic market from the dumping of agricultural surpluses and low-price imports from other countries. (La Via Campesina, 2008) Unlike market-led agrarian reform, food sovereignty favours national agricultural production over imports and supports sustainable development. The right to produce food and manage local markets clearly extends beyond the current definition of food security, which focuses on availability. The Campaign argues that genuine security equates to access to productive land and fair prices for crops to allow farmers to make a living. Priority of market access must be given to local producers, requiring supply management and regulation. La Via Campesina disagreed with the Global Forum on Agricultural Research Dresden Declaration (2001) that proposed reliance on science, biotechnology and genetic engineering as solutions to poverty, food insecurity, loss of biodiversity and environmental degradation, arguing that research should be farmerdriven, designed to meet the needs of small farmers and taken out of agribusiness control (Desmaris, 2003). Based on the platform of the struggle for the right to feed oneself (La Via Campesina, 2008), the Campaign is designed to articulate the movement s direct reaction against market-led agrarian reform (Borras, 2008). This strong expression of political will was expressed clearly through La Via Campesina s rejection of the NGO declaration on the peoples right to food in Rome at the World Food Summit in The liberal-market perspective of the Summit s Plan of Action was seen as a clear indication that NGOs with a market-access focus can no longer speak on behalf of or be representatives of peasants and farmers. Paternalism, co-optation and the dumping of imported grain in the guise of economic assistance are among criticisms of the aid industry. While both NGOs and social movements seek to shape public discourse on food politics La Via Campesina, like many social movements, is keen to position its members as occupants of spaces of political purity, while NGOs are relegated to a tainted realm (Patel, 2006). The movement differentiates its position by promoting a radically different future for agriculture that requires a reframing the global food crisis and a new image for the peasant farmer. The Campaign implements strategies that work on both global and local levels. Internationally, formal alliances and collaborations are sought to secure concessions and expand invited spaces for civil society participation. La Via Campesina recognizes that those accepting basic premise of neoliberal globalization have greater access to institutions than grassroots organizations that are highly critical (Desmaris, 2003), and hence favours strategic sector alliances with strong global players including the Land Research and Action Network (LRAN) and Food First Information and Action Network (FIAN). La Via Campesina has established thematic alliances with related movements promoting organic food and those rejecting genetic modification (Borras, 2008). On the ground, national volunteer organizations lead in organizing, advocacy and public education in their own countries, gaining support from international actors in lobbying Northern governments and international assistance agencies. La Via 4

5 Campesina is considered an influential participant in the World Social Forums, notably in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2001 and Mumbai, India in 2004 (Patomaki & Teivaninen, 2004). In spearheading the Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform, La Via Campesina has become a movement broker, driving the mobilization of other actors within a diverse network (Anheier, Glasius, & Kaldor, 2004). Manuel Castells argues that within today s network society, enabled by advances in telecommunications, metanetworks are constructed at a transnational level, facilitating decentralised concentration where tasks are completed simultaneously at multiple sites (Castells, 2000). Castells speaks of the spaces of flows where processes of communication occur. These spaces, comprised of manifold exchanges and interactions, have overcome the territorial barriers of state and neighbourhood through their flexibility and adaptiveness. Within the space of flows nodes and hubs form anchors for social organization. Networks provides political spaces where the purpose and meaning of the actors joint enterprise is negotiated (Keck & Sikkink, 1998). Routine contact between actors formalizes transnational ties and facilitates the mobilization of resources for collective action. Coalitions, as networks in action mode (Fox, 2005), coordinate shared strategies to publicly influence social change, often through protest or disruptive action. These strategies are manifested in transnational campaigns such as the Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform. In this type of international campaign sets of actors with common purposes and solidarities, linked across state boundaries, generate coordinated and sustained social mobilization along with more focused periods of activism in more than one country. Granovetter refers to the strength of weak ties within such networks (Granovetter, 1973; Gregory, 2006). Flanigan, Stohl and Bimber refer to these as affiliate ties (Flanagin, Stohl, & Bimber, 2006). Within large and flexible coalitions such as La Via Campesina these ties provide an ability to adapt and resist that is not commonly found in leader-based partnerships that are often the basis of relationships between larger, more bureaucratic organizations (Bennett, 2003). Florence Passy counters that strong ties are nevertheless vital in terms of social movement participation, and particularly in recruitment, as trust needs to be established (Passy, 2003). Nodes such as La Via Campesina facilitate resource mobilization, decision-making and information production. Actors may come and go as allies on particular causes or campaigns. Organizations operate as ties by promoting and participating in events that are linked through symbolic means, that is, by representations that provide continuity between largely independent and disconnected events. These symbolic links are highly contested as movement entrepreneurs strive to claim specific issues. Described by Mario Diani as complex and highly heterogenous network structures, social movements evolve when individuals become personally involved in collective action and are offered the opportunities to do so on a sustained basis (Diani & McAdam, 2003). Collective action is shaped by social ties between potential groups and organizations, with various levels of formalization, linked in patterns of interaction which run from the fairly centralized to the totally decentralized, from the cooperative to the explicitly hostile (Diani & McAdam, 2003). It centres on the promotion of or resistance to change by a group of indefinite and shifting membership, where leadership is determined informally (Turner & Killian, 1987). Movement dynamics, particularly the connectivity and linkages of networks on local, 5

6 national and global levels, has been neglected in studies of what Saturnino Borras (2008) calls transnational advocacy movements. Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink (1998) define transnational advocacy networks (TANs) as actors working internationally on an issue, united by shared values, a common discourse, and exchange of information and services (Keck & Sikkink, 1998). As sites for voluntary and reciprocal patterns of communication and exchange, TANs are made up of groups united by a centrality of principled ideas or values that motivate their formation - large international NGOs, research and advocacy groups, government bodies, local social movements and media organizations working together in bringing transformative and mobilizing ideas to the global sphere ideas that enforce international norms and influence domestic policy in targeted nations. TANs are vehicles for activity concerning rights and social justice issues. Communicative structures for political exchange, they are ephemeral and mobile, representing ideas rather than constituencies. They are most effective in lobbying, targeting elites and supplying information to well-placed insiders. As organized protest requires mobilization, collective identity evolves into leadership structures and sets of rules or norms within which cognitive definition or framing takes place. Frames categorise experience, playing a key role in offering interpretations. Frames must make community-oriented issues salient across international borders, while remaining grounded in the local, balancing the autonomy of members with international cooperation and collective action. Framing Theory Frames are modes of presentation that provide a context within which messages are interpreted, drawing on the existing schemas of audiences (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996). These underlying interpretive schemas dictate how we think about an issue, and they are often led by labels use in news coverage (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007). As organising principles, frames are shared within social groups and persist over time, working symbolically to meaningfully structure the social world (Reese, 2007). Framing assumes that how issues are presented influences how they are understood. The effects of messages are likely an outcome of both content and framing (Scheufele, 2000). According to Robert Entman framing defines problems, diagnose causes, make moral judgments and suggest remedies: To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation. (Entman 1993,p. 52) Within media and communication research framing refers to the way events and issues are organised and made sense of, especially by media, media professionals, and their audiences (Reese et al., 2001). Framing implies identifying some items as facts, while others are excluded (Tuchman, 1976). In their study of news coverage of the first Gulf War, Shanto Iyengar and Adam Simon (1993) describe two different types of frames applied by television networks. Episodic frames present public issues in terms of specific events, people and images while thematic news frames, which require a greater degree of interpretation, provide a context that usually indicates a 6

7 source or origin of the problem. As such, framing alters the presentation of problems. As episodic framing is more visually appealing, consisting of on-the-scene live footage, it dominates news coverage (Iyengar & Simon, 1993). Three components of frame analysis identified by (Reese et al., 2001) include the production processes carried out by journalists, texts themselves and viewers work. Gaye Tuchman (1978) and Todd Gitlin (1980) draw on Goffman s (1974) early sociological research on framing to link meaning production and the organization of experience to broader processes of organisational ownership and journalists work processes, especially with regard to sources. Journalists framing is influenced by frame sponsors - those concerned with directing the perception and frame selection of newsmakers - including political elites, public and private organizations and social movements. Tuchman found that routine practices reinforce existing power structures. Frames reveal the imprint of power as they register the identity of actors or interests that contest dominant meanings in the text (Entman, 1993). Framing processes were recognised as a central approach to understanding social movements by the mid-1990s (McAdam, McCarthy, & Zald, 1996); (Benford & Snow, 2000; Oliver & Johnston, 2005). William Gamson, Bruce Fireman and Steven Rytina introduced the idea of breaking the frame and reframing as essential precursors to collective action (Gamson, 1985). David Snow and Robert Benford (2000) developed foundational concepts including frame alignment, frame bridging, frame amplification and frame extension as ways of gaining both supporters and media attention. Social movement organizations attempt to bring their frames on an issue into public debate to win support, by identifying frame categories centred on diagnosis, prognosis and motivation: Diagnosis: identification of problem and attribution of blame or causality. What is reality? Prognosis: suggests solutions to the problems and how to achieve them strategies, tactics, and targets. Frame resonance: factors that affect mobilizing potential of frames, extent to which frames are congruent with audience observations, experience and cultural knowledge (Benford, 1993). As a central organizing idea, a frame provides a context and suggests what the issue is about through selection, emphasis, exclusion and elaboration (Tankard Jr, 2001). As such, frames are interpretative packages (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989). Frame packages resemble clusters of logical organised devices that operate as an identity kit (VanGorp, 2007). The steps in frame analysis include identifying central concepts that make up frames i.e. basic conflict/central ideas; choice of actors presenting information and ideas. Who is privileged to speak? What reasoning devices, statements of justification, causes and consequences are outlined? Word choice, descriptions, arguments and visual images contribute to frame building. The master narrative or vocabulary to induce frames may include a core frame, roots, a core position, appeals to principles, consequences, metaphor, exemplars, catchphrases and depiction (Gamson & Lasch, 1983). The members of social movement networks bring issues to the public agenda through framing or presenting issues innovatively. Zhongdang Pan and Gerarld Kosicki refer to the web of subsidies - the flow of information between source and news media, 7

8 the size and depth of which determines frame potency (Pan & Kosicki, 2001). Individual actors possess webs of varying scale that determine their own ability to mobilize the greater web through strategic targeting. Building cognitive frames is an essential component of a network s political strategies. Frame alignment renders events or occurrences meaningful to target publics. Networks employ frame extension to coincide and draw on the energy of other networks (Snow, Worden, Rochford, & Benford, 1986). Frames function to organize experience and guide action, whether individual or collective (Benford & Snow, 2000). To create frame resonance is to develop the relationship between an organization s work and its ability to influence broader public understandings. According to Tarrow a suitable collective action frame becomes part of the political culture of an organization and is an essential part of the reservoir of symbols from which future movement entrepreneurs can choose (Tarrow, 1998). Counterframing Framing research is often linked to questions of power central to the media hegemony thesis (Goldman & Rajagopal, 1991), which connects framing to the relationship between news media and political change. Frames are central to the production of hegemonic meanings. Media coverage is important in labelling the social construction of deviance (McLeod & Hertog, 1999). Social movements are among the premier challengers of hegemonic values (Carragee & Roefs, 2004). Movement media relations are described by Gamson and Wolfsfeld as a struggle over framing (Gamson & Wolfsfeld, 1993). As such, framing is the signifying work of opponents in counter-hegemonic politics (Carroll & Ratner, 1999). Frame sponsors include transnational counterpublics or new spaces of social movement activism (Olesen, 2005). Nancy Fraser refers to subaltern counterpublics as parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinate social groups invent and circulate counter discourses to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests and needs (Fraser, 1992, p. 291). As an example, Fraser refers to late 20 th century feminism movement as a multicontextual space of circulation with its own idiom, artefacts and meeting places. In common with La Via Campesina, it is a reform program, at some level maintaining an awareness of its subordinate status. Clearly marked off from the general, dominant public, the conflict goes beyond ideology and policy debate to speech genres and modes of address that constitute the public, or to the hierarchy among media (Warner, 2005). Alternative publics become social movements, according to Michael Warner (2005, p. 124) when they acquire agency in relation to the state. Entering the political sphere they adapt themselves to the performatives of rational-critical discourse. Described by Alberto Melucci as cultural innovators (Melucci, 1989) transnational social movements can be viewed as arenas where new cultural and political meanings are produced, dissent made possible and direct action imagined (Alvarez 1997, p. 108). Social movements cast doubt on uncontested frames those frequently referred to as common sense (Gamson, Croteau, Hoynes, & Sasson, 1992). Movements may move issues from the uncontested to contested realm. (Gamson et al., 1992; Gamson & Modigliani, 1989; Hallin, 1987). Counterpublics such as those participating in anticorporate globalisation movements facilitate the formation and transformation of 8

9 member identity. Scenes of self-activity, of historical rather than timeless belonging, and of active participation rather than ascriptive belonging, counterpublics, like any public, are constituted upon uptake, as expressions of volition on the part of their members (Warner, 2005). To the extent that we fight we begin to occupy a geographic and political space in society (Wittman, 2009, p. 126) As social spaces created by the reflexive circulation of discourse (Warner, 2005) publics and counterpublics are an ongoing space of encounter for discourse, the principle act of which is projecting the field of argument through genre, range, stakes and idiom. Political communication is characteristically punctual and abbreviated, what Warner calls the temporality of the headline (Warner, 2005). Public discourse requires accessibility, forcing publics to concretise a world in which discourse circulates, providing members with direct and active engagement through language. The challenge to La Via Campesina in framing issues is the need to communicate to publics with vastly different belief systems, life worlds, stories and myths, while also bridging the divide between the industrialized and non-industrialized world. La Via Campesina s Framing of the Global Food Crisis Any communication campaign is a process of issue construction that provides a common frame of meaning. Deliberate attempts to co-ordinate movement activities around a specific issue or event, campaigns aim to communicate a message beyond the informed to reach general publics. Civil society organizations and their networks disseminate movement frames through campaigns that define problems and solutions. Campaign participants develop explicit, visible ties and mutually recognised roles, employing strategically linked activities that work toward a common goal and against a common target. Experienced network actors mobilise others, initiating structural integration and cultural negotiation among groups in the network. They connect groups, seek resources, propose and prepare activities and carry out public relations. As news promoters, public relations professionals work as frame strategists, considering how issues should be presented to achieve positive outcomes for frame sponsors (Hallahan, 1999). Simultaneously, unifying and thematic frames can supply vertical and horizontal linking between actors in a network (O'Siochru, 2005). Adopting a human rights-based approach to development, the Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform encompasses a broad range of issues related to food sovereignty including global trade; the management of genetic resources and biodiversity; human rights, gender and rural development; sustainable peasant agricultural models; migration (urban/rural; international) and farm-workers labour rights. Rights-based approaches to development are challenging the market-dominated view of development that flourished in the 1980s, providing new sources of influence for advocacy and international standards of accountability. A global interpretive frame transformation such as that called for by La Via Campesina demands shift in worldviews regarding the politics of food. To undertake this the Campaign must present the case that fundamentally unjust conditions have endured for longer than acceptable. The blame must shift as major changes are sought in the status, treatment or activity of a category of people (Snow et al., 1986). In carrying out 9

10 frame transformations social movements must create resonance, evoking existent values and attitudes. They must ground their counter-ideology in the interpretive schemas of the dominant public, drawing on their ideas and beliefs (Swindler, 1986). Relevance is further supported by empirical credibility, experiential commensurability and narrative fidelity (Snow et al., 1986). This requires that a frame support diagnostic, prognostic and motivational claims which can be tested, that it suggests solutions appropriate to the context and, finally, that it fits with existing cultural stories. How this is done in the human rights sector is through an appeal to liberal ideological traditions and basic ideas of human dignity and, frequently, the issue of bodily harm to vulnerable individuals. Through the use of short and clear causal stories assigning responsibility to guilty parties, specific cultural and political contexts can be transcended. Dramatic portrayal of these stories through witnessing and personal testimony can be highly persuasive. The power relationships implied by physical violence relegate other types of power asymmetries that might divide networks to the background. Data, while less emotive than images and personal account, provides the rational appeal, hence the focus on accuracy and thoroughness in information gathering practiced by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. The development of shared practice contributes to common frame and, according to Goffman (1974), framing organises more than meaning; it organises involvement, essential to the network. The strategic framing processes of transnational advocacy networks can impact negatively on the rhetorical strategies available to network actors, suggesting that researchers need to pay closer attention not just to whether and how issues get on the international agenda, but to whether or not the frames adopted in the norm-building process are actually conducive to the robustness of a given norm in practice (Carpenter, 2005). While symbols and signifiers such as women and children are part of the cultural tool kit with which advocates build frames (Swindler, 1986) other groups must not be marginalized through default. FIAN, Via Campesina s partner in the Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform, is an international organization that carries out International Fact Finding Missions to identify and address human rights violations (FIAN, 2009). Local struggles around access to productive resources and the rights of peasants are becoming increasingly conflictual and brutal. The oppression of peasant leaders, death threats, forcible evictions and assassinations happen in many countries world-wide. (La Via Campesina, 2006) FIAN establishes emergency networks for international intervention in cases of human rights abuses over food and/or land and uses traditional tactics such as naming and shaming (Strothenke, 2007). Historically, the criminalization and persecution of peasants who exercise democratic rights to organize and express their views and self-determine has been ignored as a human rights issue (Desmaris, 2002). The Declaration of Peasants Rights was adopted by the Via Campesina International Coordinating Committee in Seoul, March 2009 (La Via Campesina, 2009). According to the Human Right to Food, presented in Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, peasants are entitled access to productive resources, specifically land. International human rights law sets standards 10

11 and defies unjust frameworks that negate the necessity of instituting agrarian reform programs. The shift from food security to food sovereignty developed by La Via Campesina at the World Food Summit in 1996 as an alternative paradigm within which to frame issues about food and agriculture (Rosset, 2006) is contextualised in an argument over rights: Food is a basic human right. This right can only be realized in a system where food sovereignty is guaranteed. Food sovereignty is the right of each nation to maintain and develop its own capacity to produce its basic foods respecting cultural and productive diversity. We have the right to produce our own food in our own territory. Food sovereignty is a precondition to genuine food security. (La Via Campesina, 2008 ) Based on the special nature of agriculture and its multifunctionality as preserving landscapes and protecting farm livelihoods and rural traditions (Rosset, 2006), reform goes beyond redistribution of land. It requires the comprehensive revision of agricultural systems to favour the production and marketing of small farm produce, and requires the social ownership of land whereby families have usufruct rights. Peasants, rural women and small farmers make up more than half the world s population. We have the right to a life of dignity. We have the right to produce our own food in our own territory. We have a right to make a living on our land. (La Via Campesina, November 11, 2003) According to La Via Campesina, the enemy is the model and a transition is needed (Peter Rosset, Patel, & Courville, 2006). Market-assisted land reform is inadequate in highly unequal societies and cannot replace agrarian reform processes that expropriate large landowners whose land is often unused and fulfils no social and economic benefit. World Bank initiatives in rural development are based on the assumption that agriculture is the main source of economic growth therefore productivity increase is the solution. This requires the liberalization of markets, the inclusion of agriculture in multilateral trade agreements, the strengthening of private companies, privatization of sectors controlled by the state, investment in biotechnology, support for diversification of export agriculture and increased efficiency in water use (Patel, 2006). While the perceived failure of neoliberalism has provoked those excluded from debate, political struggle, direct action and strategic linkages with international support systems can only be successful in managing a frame transformation of this scale if new values [are] planted and nurtured, old meanings or understandings jettisoned, and erroneous beliefs...reframed in order to garner support and secure participation (Snow et al., 1986). Formal appeals for the strengthening of peasant and farmer-based food production have been made to the Food and Agriculture Organization (Saragih, April 28, 2008). La Via Campesina has called for the G8 to clean up their own mess instead of dictating to poor countries what to do (La Via Campesina, April 17, 2009a) emphasizing that the solution to the global food crisis does not exist in market-led agricultural development. The agency of peoples movements to build development funding alternatives (La Via Campesina, May 5, 2009) challenges the neoliberal paradigm that globalised trade is the solution to economic growth, calling into question the three pillars of market access, domestic supports and export subsidies. Getting the WTO out of agriculture is a recurrent 11

12 theme (Rosset, 2006). In the language of laymen, La Via Campesina has coalesced North and South around common objectives, explicitly rejecting neo-liberal model of rural development, and refusing to be excluded from agricultural policy development, determined to empower peasant voices and establish an alternative model of agriculture. We call on all those responsible in governments to step out of the neoliberal model and to have the courage to seek an alternative path of cooperation with social justice and mutual assistance. (La Via Campesina, November 11, 2003) Amplifying frames through the identification, idealization, and elevation of one or more values (Snow et al., 1986) such as social justice, La Via Campesina is credited with setting an international agenda (Carlsen, 2007). The movement has made strategic decisions to target TNCs including Monsanto, Cargill, Archer Damiels Midland and Wal-Mart, denying the imperatives of an economic model that dictates Big is Powerful (Carlsen, 2007). The public s growing distrust of food systems has provided political opportunities to the movement. The horror of viral outbreaks such as mad cow disease (BSE) and foot and mouth in the United Kingdom, in combination with arguments of environmental sustainability, has further amplified frames around food safety. Descriptions of food from nowhere (Bove & Dufour, 2002), frustration over food swapping between countries and food miles that intensify the energy impact of industrial agriculture (McMichael, 2007) resonate with environmental advocates. The concept of food sovereignty implies a diversity of solutions, not a monoculture, inviting consumers to embrace a set of ideas, policies and ways of eating that are sensitive to history, ecology and culture and that respect human rights (Patel, 2007). In employing frame extension, i.e. broadening its mission to expand participation (Snow et al., 1986), La Via Campesina situates issues in crises faced by indigenous populations, in the same way the Zapatistas movement in Mexico framed labour and civil rights in the context of native peoples (Olesen, 2005). In 2002 GCAR brought attention to gender inequalities in the management of rural land reform (Desmaris, 2007). Such strategic overlapping and broadening of frames enables Campaign actors to leverage internationally recognized social and economic rights and collaborative with human rights NGOs, anti-globalization movements and environmental groups on campaigns such as Our World is Not For Sale and Another World is Possible. The symbolic power of events is manifest in the Campaign. Yearly mobilisations on April 17, commemorating the murder of 19 MST activists in Eldorado do Carajas in Brazil in 1996 mark the international day of peasant struggle (La Via Campesina, April 17, 2009b). During a WTO ministerial in Cancun, Mexico, in 2003 Korean farmer Lee Kyung Hae, committed suicide while carrying a sign the WTO kills farmers. La Via Campesina uses Lee s story as a mobilizing event or condensation symbol. As a shorthand means by which large numbers of beliefs, feelings, values, and perhaps worldviews are telegraphed to others sharing a similar culture (Johnson- Cartee, 2004, p. 166) the image of Lee is used as a vector for the creation of a new international solidarity. Adopted by many national campaigns, Lee s story projects the movement as a political imaginary a political culture of constant engagement and commitment (Patel, 2006), deepening of existing tropes of social justice, 12

13 democracy and rights. Stories of individual effort, such as those of Bolivian and Chilean women hiding seeds to maintain biodiversity (Rodri, 2003) add a mythological power to the image of the peasant, for centuries maligned as an anachronism. The peasantry has been portrayed historically as a backward sector, rooted in traditional productive practices and embedded in obsolete cultures. Peasant s deep ties to natural cycles are often considered limitations to human transcendence defined as the conquest of nature and the progress of technology. Their diversity is seen as an impediment to an efficient, homogenized society. (Carlsen, 2007) Seen through the lens of capital/labour relations, peasants are ultimately redundant within the march of capitalist modernity (McMichael, 2007). By reasserting the politics of peasants, drawing on substantive conceptions of rights, economies and ecological relations (Otero, 2003), La Via Campesina reframes the traditional view of the peasantry, building new concepts of modernity. In reframing agrarian citizenship, the movement is proposing new forms of political participation, situating peasants in the global political economy. [This] does not entail a rejection of modernity, technology and trade accompanied by a romanticised return to an archaic past steeped in rustic traditions [but is based on] ethics and values where culture and social justice count for something and concrete mechanisms are put in place to ensure a future without hunger (Desmarais, 2007) Despite the diversity of the movement, frame bridging enables participants in the campaign to unite around common goals. Recognizing mutual ideological positions in different contexts, La Via Campesina promotes a global structure deeply rooted in local issues and the realities of regions. Regions are encouraged to mobilize and are free to choose the focus of collective action, which is then reported on. Members are encouraged to send the International Operative of La Via Campesina reports and information on the impacts of agribusiness TNCs that create hunger, poverty for family farmers and peasants and to organize seminars, public discussions, actions, mobilizations, press conferences to expose the impacts of agribusiness TNCs and to delegitimize their role in the food sector (Saragih, 2008). Crucial to frame bridging is information diffusion through networks including the mass media (Snow et al., 1986). Media framing of the Global Food Crisis According to William Gamson, while political news may not always be the primary source of political knowledge about a public issue, it is unusual for people to ignore media discourse in forming opinions (Johnson-Cartee, 2004). Public acceptance of the interpretive package of a social movement is key to success (Gerhards & Rucht, 1992). Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann refers to the condition under which mass media has real and powerful effects as ubiquity, consonance and cumulation, meaning that a pervasive media sending repetitious messages containing similar pictures of the world will influence readers, viewers and listeners (Noelle-Neumann, 1999). 13

14 Particularly relevant are the elite media which bear disproportionate influence on other news media organizations (Paletz, 2002). In the United States, these include The New York Times and The Washington Post. Equivalents in the United Kingdom are The Times and The Guardian. Prestige news media include news magazines such as Time, Newsweek and The Economist, along with broadcasters who lack the resources to cover issues in as greater depth as the elite. Both elite and prestige sources are often quoted in national and local media in what is referred to as reciprocal media influence (Johnson-Cartee, 2004). Framing is a process by which communication sources including news organizations, public relations professional and politicians define and construct an issue (Nelson, Oxley, & Clawson, 1997). Critical perspectives of framing refer to ties to elite structures and their role in exercising control or hegemony. News stories as communicative acts (McLeod & Hertog, 1999) also serve as forums for framing contests in which political actors compete by sponsoring their preferred definitions of issues (Carragee & Roefs, 2004). A specific frame s ability to dominate news discourse depends on the sponsor s economic and cultural resources, the sponsor s knowledge of journalistic practices, practices themselves and a frame s resonance with broader political values (Carragee & Roefs, 2004). Therefore framing contests frequently favour political elites (Gitlin, 1980; Tuchman, 1978). Gitlin (1980) first demonstrated the conflicting frames of corporate media and protest movements in a study of The New York Times application of negative frames to coverage of the Students for a Democratic Society movement, demonstrating that negative frames can marginalise social movements. In Gitlin s interpretation frames are the principles of selection, emphasis, and presentation composed of tacit little theories about what exists, what happens and what matters (Gitlin 1980, p. 6-7). They are information generating devices as well as screens, enabling journalists, as symbol-handlers, to recognise. information, to assign it to cognitive categories (Gitlin 1980, p. 21). As conceptual tools used in processes of communication, interpretation and evaluation (Neuman, Just, & Crigler, 1992), familiar frames are applied by the news media according to latent structures of meaning. They invite the audience to read a news item, and therefore see the world, in a similar way. The suggestion of a frame determines the meaning a reader or viewer ascribes to an issue. Frames are part of culture, defined as an organised set of beliefs, codes, myths, stereotypes, values, norms, frames shared in the collective memory of a group in society (Van Gorp, 2007; Zald, 1996). Therefore a shared repertoire of frames in culture provide a link between news production and consumption (Van Gorp, 2007). Embedded in media content, they interact with the schemata of journalist and audience member. Newsgathering routines reinforce tendencies towards accessible and authoritative sources - the observance of the journalistic norm of objectivity itself leads to a reliance on official sources and definitions (conventional) as opposed to unofficial (unconventional) sources. Accordingly, frames tend to perpetuate the status quo (Tuchman, 1972). Forces external to news organizations impact on the autonomy and the interpretations of journalists (Carragee & Roefs, 2004). Journalistic frames are influenced on the extramedia level by media routines, organisational characteristics (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996) and media links to power structures (Donohue, Tichenor, & Olien, 1995; McLeod & Hertog, 1992; Paletz & Entman, 1981). 14

15 Events such as protests provide opportunities to examine the origins of framing contests. Johnston and Noakes (2005, p. 19) refer to the protest paradigm a readymade frame template that the media apply to social movement activity that, among other things, trivialises and demonises social movement activities and beliefs. The mass media generally attend to violent events and threats of violence (Kriesberg, 2006). Coverage of dramatic action can occur at the expense of the movement s key messages but dependence on the media overrides these concerns, as mass media is life and death for social movements. Mass media reporting transforms protest into a relevant social event. it enables and sometimes induces political acts which take the form of protest (Rucht, Koopmans, & Neidhardt, 1999). The protest paradigm detracts from messages in framing contests. Bartering for media attention with compelling visuals of action, social movements frequently receive hostile control messages that escalate when a movement becomes more radical (McLeod & Hertog, 1999). Delegitimization, marginalisation and demonization is characteristic of coverage of opposition to WTO talks, G8 and G20 Summits (George, 2001). Non-coverage is equally denigrating. When left out of news coverage, groups do not exist in the public sphere; they experience symbolic annihilation (Tuchman, 1981). Reporters cite compassion fatigue and a shortage of visual material from wartorn countries such as Afghanistan and Somalia as reasons for non-coverage (Guardian Unlimited, November 21, 2008). Eli Flournoy, director of CNN International cites an addiction to breaking news and a two-week window for it to have the attention of the world it s just not enough (Guardian Unlimited, November 21, 2008). Local frames resonate with audiences but do not explain the international context, as in the case of a series in The Washington Post where a case study on Mauritania, Africa, is overwhelmed by coverage of the state of the mid-west s breadbasket (Black, 2008). In Australia, farmers claim food riots not our fault (News Limited, 2008) denying blame cast by The New York Times article A drought in Australia, a Global Shortage of Rice (Bradsher, 2008). The Australian Broadcasting Corporation presents the food crisis as an apocalyptic warning, quoting Tim Costello, head of World Vision Australia (Barlow, 2008). The Sydney Morning Herald features naked Mexican farmers protesting in a photo essay that exemplifies the enduring nature of the novelty frame and the power of an attention-grabbing image. I was enthralled by the absurdity and the energy of the protest. There was an electric atmosphere with drumming, dancing and the framers chanting respuestas (answers). I was also amazed at how many riot police were watching.(grono, June 18, 2008) Characteristics of protest coverage include reliance on official sources and the invocation of public opinion. Countermovements are frequently portrayed as unsuccessful groups contending for power. Episodic reporting of anti-globalisation protests in Seattle and Genoa frames includes key assumptions such as the ruling class is peaceful while protestors are violent; protesters are guilty or at least suspect; it is the right of the G8 to meet; protesters have no right to be there; minorities cause violence; protests are not political only world leaders do politics. Illegitimate framing of La Via Campesina includes characterisation as phony farmers and disorganised anarchists on a demo-holiday (Rogers, 2004). 15