i

Political Agroecology
Advancing the Transition to Sustainable Food Systems
ii

Advances in Agroecology
Series Editors:

Clive A. Edwards, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

Stephen R. Gliessman, University of California, Santa Cruz, California

Structure and Function in Agroecosystem Design and Management, edited by

Masae Shiyomi and Hiroshi Koizumi
Landscape Ecology in Agroecosystems Management, edited by Lech Ryszkowski
Tropical Agroecosystems, edited by John H. Vandermeer
Soil Tillage in Agroecosystems, edited by Adel El Titi
Multi-​Scale Integrated Analysis of Agroecosystems, by Mario Giampietro
Soil Organic Matter in Sustainable Agriculture, edited by Fred Magdoff and Ray R. Weil
Agroecosystems in a Changing Climate, edited by Paul C.D. Newton, R. Andrew Carran,
Grant R. Edwards, and Pascal A. Niklaus
Integrated Assessment of Health and Sustainability of Agroecosystems, by
Thomas Gitau, Margaret W. Gitau, and David Waltner-​Toews
Sustainable Agroecosystem Management: Integrating Ecology, Economics and Society,
edited by Patrick J. Bohlen and Gar House
The Conversion to Sustainable Agriculture: Principles, Processes, and Practices,
edited by Stephen R. Gliessman and Martha Rosemeyer
Sustainable Agriculture and New Biotechnologies, edited by Noureddine Benkeblia
Global Economic and Environmental Aspects of Biofuels, edited by David Pimentel
Microbial Ecology in Sustainable Agroecosystems, edited by Tanya Cheeke,
David C. Coleman, and Diana H. Wall
Land Use Intensification: Effects on Agriculture, Biodiversity, and Ecological Processes,
edited by David Lindenmayer, Saul Cunningham, and Andrew Young
Agroecology, Ecosystems, and Sustainability, edited by Noureddine Benkeblia
Agroecology: A Transdisciplinary, Participatory and Action-​oriented Approach, edited by
V. Ernesto Méndez, Christopher M. Bacon, Roseann Cohen, Stephen R. Gliessman
Energy in Agroecosystems: A Tool for Assessing Sustainability, by
Gloria I. Guzmán Casado and Manuel González de Molina
Agroecology in China: Science, Practice, and Sustainable Management, edited by
Luo Shiming and Stephen R. Gliessman
Climate Change and Crop Production: Foundations for Agroecosystem Resilience,
edited by Noureddine Benkeblia
Environmental Resilience and Food Law: Agrobiodiversity and Agroecology,
edited by Gabriela Steier, Alberto Giulio Cianci
Political Agroecology: Advancing the Transition to Sustainable Food Systems, by
Manuel González de Molina, Paulo Frederico Petersen, Francisco Garrido Peña,
Francisco Roberto Caporal

For more information about this series, please visit: www.crcpress.com/​Advances-​in-​

Agroecology/​book-​series/​CRCADVAGROECO
iii

Political Agroecology
Advancing the Transition to Sustainable Food Systems

Manuel González de Molina

Paulo Frederico Petersen
Francisco Garrido Peña
Francisco Roberto Caporal
iv

CRC Press
Taylor & Francis Group
52 Vanderbilt Avenue,
New York, NY 10017
© 2020 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
No claim to original U.S. Government works
Printed on acid-​free paper
International Standard Book Number-13: 978-1-138-36922-1 (Paperback)
International Standard Book Number-13: 978-1-138-36923-8 (Hardback)
This book contains information obtained from authentic and highly regarded sources.
Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author
and publisher cannot assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or the consequences
of their use. The authors and publishers have attempted to trace the copyright holders of all material
reproduced in this publication and apologize to copyright holders if permission to publish in this
form has not been obtained. If any copyright material has not been acknowledged please write
and let us know so we may rectify in any future reprint.
Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced,
transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known
or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers.
For permission to photocopy or use material electronically from this work, please access
www.copyright.com (www.copyright.com/​) or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222
Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-​750-​8400. CCC is a not-​for-​profit organization that provides
licenses and registration for a variety of users. For organizations that have been granted a photocopy
license by the CCC, a separate system of payment has been arranged.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at
​www.taylorandfrancis.com
and the CRC Press Web site at
​www.crcpress.com
v

Cover Art by Lucia Vignoli

The cover illustration, “Buen Vivir,” was created by Lucia Vignoli and Joana Lyra,
artist-faculty members of the ArteGestoAção Research Group (ArtGestureAction)
linked to the Instituto Nacional de Educación de Sordos [National Institute of Deaf
People], Brazil. Produced with manual paintings and stamps, the image is inspired by
a traditional West African communication system, the Adinkras stamps, vehicles of
information and values with aesthetic, ethical and political meanings. The compos-
ition reveals a system of interactions in which humans and non-humans are organic-
ally integrated into the reproduction of “Buen Vivir”.
vi
vii

Contents
About the Authors ..................................................................................................xi
Introduction ..........................................................................................................xiii

Chapter 1 Theoretical Foundations of Political Agroecology ............................ 1

1.1 Political Agroecology: A Tentative Definition............................. 1
1.2 A Thermodynamic Approach to Society...................................... 3
1.3 A Socioecological View of Society: Social Metabolism.............. 5
1.4 Social Entropy.............................................................................. 8
1.5 Institutions and Social Inequity.................................................. 11
1.6 Politics and Entropy...................................................................12
1.7 Political Institutions: The Trade-​off Between Social and
Physical Entropy......................................................................... 13
1.8 Conflict, Protest, and Metabolic Change.................................... 16
1.9 Politics in Agroecosystems......................................................... 18
1.10 Funds and Flows in Agrarian Metabolism.................................. 20
1.11 The Organization and Dynamics of Agrarian Metabolism......... 23
1.12 Agroecological Transition and Food Regime Change................ 24

Chapter 2 The Industrialization of Agriculture and the Enlargement of

the Food Chain ................................................................................ 27
2.1 The Origins of Industrial Agriculture......................................... 28
2.2 The Institutional Framework: Private Property
and Market.................................................................................. 31
2.3 The First Globalization: The Emergence of
Food Regimes............................................................................. 33
2.4 Green Revolution and the Second Food Regime........................ 34
2.5 The Main Drivers of Agricultural Industrialization.................... 37
2.6 Beyond Agriculture: The Food System...................................... 40
2.7 A Third Food Regime?............................................................... 44

Chapter 3 A Regime on the Road to Collapse ................................................. 47

3.1 The Physical Impossibility of Economic Growth....................... 48
3.2 Metabolic Crisis and Capital Accumulation: A Marxist
Reading....................................................................................... 51
3.3 Industrial Agriculture: An Inefficient and Harmful
Model That is Exhausted............................................................ 54
3.4 Evidences of an Announced Collapse........................................ 60
3.5 “Business as Usual” Is Not an Option for The
Future: Looking for Alternatives................................................ 65

vii
viii

viii Contents

Chapter 4 Cognitive Frameworks and Institutional Design for an

Agroecological Transition ............................................................... 73
4.1 The Cognitive Frameworks of Political Agroecology................ 73
4.1.1 Cognitive Principles of Political Agroecology:
Ideology.......................................................................... 75
4.1.2 Eight Solid Principles of Cooperative
Management of Natural Resources: Institutional
Design............................................................................. 78
4.1.3 Agroecological Effects of Cooperative
Institutional Design......................................................... 79
4.2 An Institutional Design for Agroecological Resilience.............. 80
4.2.1 Origin and Negentropic Function of Institutions............ 81
4.2.2 Scales and the “Social Point” of Cooperative
Institutions......................................................................82
4.3 Diversity of Basic-Scale Agroecological Institutions
(The Firm).................................................................................. 83
4.3.1 The Family Institution as a Preferential
Agroecological Firm....................................................... 83
4.3.2 A Cooperative Institution as a Preferential
Model of Agroecological Firm........................................ 84
4.3.3 Local Markets................................................................. 85
4.3.4 Long Chains of Agroecological Trade............................ 86
4.3.5 Agroecological Districts................................................. 88
4.3.6 Virtual Local Currencies................................................. 88
4.4 Democratic Governance and Diffuse State for the
Agroecological Transition.......................................................... 89
4.4.1 Agroecology as Collective Multilevel Action................. 90
4.4.2 Normative Action and Popular Sovereignty as a
Procedure........................................................................ 92
4.4.3 Cooperative Democracy.................................................. 93
4.4.4 Deliberative Democracy.................................................. 95

Chapter 5 Scaling Agroecology ....................................................................... 97

5.1 The Nature of Change: The Metamorphosis of the Food
System........................................................................................ 98
5.2 A Strategy for Change: Scaling Up Agroecology.................... 100
5.3 Peasant Agriculture: The Cocoons of Agroecological
Metamorphosis......................................................................... 102
5.4 Countermovements Favoring the De-​commodification
of Food Systems....................................................................... 106
5.5 Scaling Up Territories............................................................... 109
5.6 Lock-Ins and Systemic Rejection............................................. 111
5.7 Patriarchy as a Political–​Cultural Obstacle to
Agroecology............................................................................. 113
5.8 Agroecological-​oriented Local Food Systems......................... 114
ix

Contents ix

Chapter 6 The Agents of the Agroecological Transition ................................ 119

6.1 “Food Populism”: Building Social Majorities of Change........ 119
6.2 Peasants: Central Actors in the Agroecological Transition...... 123
6.3 Peasant Conditions under Capitalism and Agricultural
Industrialization........................................................................ 128
6.4 The “New Peasants”................................................................. 131
6.5 Agroecology and Feminism: The Central Role of Women...... 133
6.6 Politicizing Food......................................................................135
6.7 Agroecological Movements as “New Green” Movements....... 138

Chapter 7 The Role of the State and Public Policies ..................................... 143
7.1 Public Policies from a Political Agroecology Perspective....... 144
7.2 Experiences in Public Policies Favoring Agroecology............. 146
7.3 Main Conclusions of the Analysis of Public Policies............... 151
7.4 Public Policies to Scale Up Agroecology................................. 153
7.5 An Agroecological Approach to the Design and
Implementation of Public Policies............................................ 154
7.6 Public Policies that Lead to Scaling Up................................... 157
7.6.1 Program for the Construction of Cisterns, Brazilian
Semiarid Region............................................................ 158
7.6.2 Organic Agriculture Program in Cuba.......................... 159
7.6.3 Organic Foods for Social Consumption in
Andalusia, Spain........................................................... 159
7.6.4 Biofertilization and Biological Control Input
Programs in Cuba.......................................................... 160
7.6.5 The National Policy of Technical Assistance and
Rural Extension, Brazil................................................. 160
7.6.6 Institutional Purchasing, Brazil..................................... 161
7.6.7 Olive “Residues” Composting Program in
Andalusia, Spain........................................................... 161
7.6.8 ProHuerta’s Program, Argentina................................... 162
7.6.9 The National Policy of Agroecology and Organic
Production, Brazil......................................................... 162
7.6.10 State Policy on Organic Farming (2004) and
Organic Mission (2010), Sikkim, India........................ 163
7.6.11 Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (2015).......................... 164
7.6.12 Advances in Professional Training and Support for
the Organization of Agroecology Hubs in Brazilian
Educational Institutions................................................ 164

References .......................................................................................................... 167

Index ................................................................................................................... 195
x
xi

About the Authors

Manuel González de Molina
Full Professor of Modern History. Coordinator of the Agro-​Ecosystems History
Laboratory (Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain). Co-​director of Master
Degree Program on Agroecology at International University of Andalusia from 1996
to present. President of the Spanish Society for Agrarian History (www.seha.info)
and member of the editorial board of the ISI-​refereed journal Historia Agraria
[Agrarian History Review], Anthropoce and Sustainability. Vice-​President of the
Spanish Society for Organic Agriculture (SEAE) from 2006 to 2014. Minister of
the Department of Organic Agriculture of the Andalusia Government (Spain)
from 2004 to 2007. Author of several books, among the most recent: The Social
Metabolism. A Socioecological Theory of Historical Change (Springer, 2014),
Energy in Agroecosystems: A Tool for Assessing Sustainability (CRC Press, USA,
2017). Author of 100 articles published in journals such as Environment and
History, Ecological Economics, Land Use Policy, Environmental History, Regional
Environmental Change, Ecology and Society, Agroecology and Sustainable Food
Systems, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, among others.

Paulo Frederico Petersen

Doctorate in Environmental Studies from Pablo de Olavide University (Spain),
Master in Agroecology and Rural Development from the Universidad Internacional
de Andalucía (Spain), graduated in Agronomy from the Federal University of
Viçosa (Brazil). Executive coordinator of the NGO AS-​PTA –​Family Farming and
Agroecology, former President (from 2013 to 2014) and current Vice-​President of
ABA-​ Agroecologia (Brazilian Association of Agroecology). Editor-​ in-​
chief of
Agriculturas: experiencias em agroecologia magazine. Member of the National
Commission of Agroecology and Organic Production (CNAPO), and member
of its Coordinating Table from 2014 to 2018. Member of the Editorial Board of
Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (USA), Revista de Agroecología
(Spain), Revista Brasileira de Agroecologia (Brazil), and the Coleção Transição
Agroecológica published by Brazilian Agricultural Research Enterprise (Embrapa).

Francisco Garrido Peña

PhD in Philosophy of Law (Universidad de Granada) and full professor of Politics
and Law at Universidad de Jaén (Spain). His research activity is focused on Political
Ecology, Ethics, and Institutional Design. In Political Ecology, the topics of research
have been the political ecology of time (intertemporal discounts), political sover-
eignty, ecological theory of the State and political power, ecological conflicts, social
movements, gender and ecology, animalism and Political Agroecology. In the discip-
line of ethics the main topics have been: ecological ethics, zooethics, public bioethics,
experimental ethics, altruism, intergenerational solidarity, sense of justice. And in the

xi
xii

xii About the Authors

field of institutional design: design of intergenerational institutions, institutions for

sustainability, collective decisions in public health and the environment, citizen par-
ticipation. These academic activities have been complemented with his social and
political activism in the environmental movements. He was elected Deputy of the
Greens in the parliament of the region of Andalucía between 1994 and 1996. He was
also Deputy of the Greens in the Spanish parliament between 2004 and 2008. He was
Spanish confederal speaker of the Green Party (Los Verdes) between 1991 and 1994
and 2004 and 2008.

Francisco Roberto Caporal

PhD in Agroecology, Peasantry and History, from the Institute of Sociology and
Peasant Studies (Córdoba University, Spain). Master in Rural Extension by Federal
University of Santa Maria (1991) and graduate in Agronomy, Federal University
of Santa Maria (1975). Currently, he works as Associate Professor of the Federal
Rural University of Pernambuco, in the Department of Education, teaching in Rural
Extension. Member of the Agroecology and Peasantry Nucleus –​NAC/​UFRPE. He
was Technical Director of EMATER-​RS, from 1999 to 2002, as Deputy Director of
the Department of Technical Assistance and Rural Extension (DATER) and General
Coordinator of Ater and Education, in the same Department of the Secretariat of
Family Agriculture, Agricultural Development, from 2004 to 2010 (Agrarian
Development Minister of Brazil). He has experience in Agronomy, with emphasis
on Technical Assistance and Rural Extension, working mainly in the following
subjects: technical assistance and rural extension, sustainable rural development,
Agroecology, environment and family agriculture, training of rural extension agents.
President of Associação Brasileira de Agroecologia (ABA-​Agroecologia) from 2006
to 2010.
xiii

Introduction
From a biophysical point of view, the industrialization of agriculture led to a fun-
damental reconfiguration of agricultural production and the way in which our
endosomatic consumption is satisfied. The possibility of injecting large amounts of
energy and materials offered by oil and its associated technologies radically changed
the world’s agricultural scenario during the twentieth century. Basic functions that
in past times had been fulfilled by the land (production of traction power, fuels,
fiber, feed, basic foodstuffs for human consumption, etc.), and to which a fairly large
portion of territory was dedicated, have disappeared, giving rise to a specialized
landscape, peppered with constructions and areas used for urban-​industrial prop-
erties (Agnoletti, 2006; Guzmán Casado & González de Molina, 2009; González
de Molina & Toledo, 2014). From 1961 to 2016, the world’s production of cereals
multiplied almost by four, surpassing the corresponding growth rate in global popu-
lation, and the availability of cereals per capita rose by 60% as a result (www.fao.org/​
faostat, accessed 15 March 2019).
Despite this huge productive effort, rural poverty, hunger, and endemic mal-
nutrition continue to exist. The Food and Agriculture Organization has estimated
that over 825 million people in the world are victims of famine or malnutrition (see
www.fao.org). The dominant food regime is incapable today of nourishing the whole
of humankind –​it doesn’t really seem to be oriented toward that goal either –​even
though there is enough raw harvest to do so. Scant progress has been made to eradi-
cate rural poverty. Apparently, agriculture and the food system continue to supply
endosomatic energy, which ensures nourishment and the reproduction of the human
species, but their role is currently experiencing major changes (Francis et al., 2003).
From being a vital provider of energy, agriculture has become a consumer of energy.
Deprived of its external energy subsidy, it might not work any longer (Leach, 1976;
Pimentel & Pimentel, 1979; Gliessman, 1998; Guzmán Casado & González de
Molina, 2017). Agriculture has become a subsidiary activity within industrial econ-
omies, being valued mainly as a food and raw materials supplier and to a much
lesser extent as a provider of other goods and services, e.g., environmental ones. The
biomass produced is but one among all the material flows, and its weight is losing
ground to global social metabolism (Krausmann et al., 2017a).
The food market has gone global, forcing agricultural products to travel long
distances before reaching consumers’ tables; even when eaten fresh, they require
huge logistical infrastructures. Processed food has overtaken fresh food and the
amount of meals eaten out increases day by day. Furthermore, sophisticated new
appliances, using gas or electricity, take part in human nutrition and have increased
food’s energy cost (Infante et al., 2018). New activities, unheard of in the past,
intervening between production and consumption, have come to the fore and have
become paramount: food transformation and delivery. The way food is eaten now-
adays causes not only huge health problems to humans but also creates unhealthy
agricultural systems, including those in third countries. There is a long story behind
each piece of food we eat: a long chain of links that multiplies energy and material

xiii
xiv

xiv Introduction

consumption together with pollutant emissions and unbalanced trade. Thus, food
consumption is turned into a process rife with social and environmental impacts.
As a result, the distribution of food in the world has become increasingly unfair.
On the one hand, a large portion of the world’s population cannot reach a minimum
consumption of calories and nutrients to the extent that famine and undernourish-
ment have become structural phenomena. On the other hand, a similar portion of the
world’s population is overfed and suffers severe health problems which financially
strain their health systems (IPES-​Food, 2016).
These are manifestations of a crisis arising from mechanisms that lie at the
very heart of the dominant food regime. Allowing them to continue leads to accel-
erating social and environmental deterioration and, if not remedied, the system is
likely to collapse. The only viable solution lies in building a markedly different
food system, based on sustainable forms of production and processing, distribu-
tion, and consumption. The multitude of agroecological experiences that exists the
world over prefigures and constitutes the basis of this alternative food regime. The
challenge is to scale up both horizontally (scaling out) and vertically (scaling up).
Indeed, the majority of agroecological experiences, linked to social movements,
non-​governmental organizations, academic institutions and, to a significantly lesser
extent, governments, remain widely restricted to farm or community experiences,
encouraging research, participatory action and design of sustainable rural develop-
ment strategies or urban food supply. To scale out and up, it is essential to change
the institutional framework that is currently maintaining, despite its unfeasibility,
today’s corporate food regime (CFR). This change must necessarily be political.
However, agroecological movements are characterized by the scarcity of political
proposals that reach beyond the local sphere. This is because the nexus between
Agroecology and politics is not fully perceived as a fundamental link for developing
and maintaining agroecological experiences and, above all, to generalize them. So
Agroecology is not entirely prepared to face this challenge. The aim of this book is
to build a political theory that makes the scaling-​up of agroecological experiences
possible, turning them into the foundation of a new and alternative food regime.
The link between politics and Agroecology is not new. Many authors have
emphasized the need for socioeconomic structural reforms in order to achieve sustain-
able agrarian systems (Gliessman, 1998; Rosset, 2003; Levins, 2006; Holt-​Giménez,
2006; Perfecto et al., 2009; Altieri & Toledo, 2011; Rosset & Altieri, 2017; Giraldo,
2018). However, this concern is still far from widespread and has not been fully
internalized by agroecologists and agroecological movements. Meanwhile, some aca-
demic and institutional sectors of Agroecology, that foster a purely “technical” vision
of Agroecology, are becoming increasingly influential. They promote technological
solutions rather than institutional or social change solutions to the unsustainability
problems produced by the CFR. Ignoring politics or relegating it to a secondary place
results, on the one hand, in agroecological experiences lacking efficiency and sta-
bility and barely reaching the required size, thus hindering the necessary process of
scaling out and up; and on the other hand, they result in spreading the false idea that
technological innovation alone, without substantial social and economic change, will
achieve more sustainable food systems. The first leads to inefficiency, the second to
inactivity, and both sever the possibilities of Agroecology becoming an alternative to
the current food regime.
xv

Introduction xv

According to Wezel et al. (2009), most of the agroecological literature is devoted

to the technical–​agronomic aspects of agroecosystem management. However, some
authors have been stressing the need to broaden the scope beyond production, so that
Agroecology is effectively consolidated as a guiding approach leading agriculture
toward sustainability (Francis et al., 2003; Altieri & Toledo, 2011; Gliessman, 2015;
Pimbert, 2015). Faced with the temptation to consider Agroecology as the sum of three
types of action, as science, as practice, and as a social movement, considered even in
an independent way, theory and practice must be understood in an indissoluble way.
In fact, Agroecology has been synergistically combining these three dimensions of
action, condensing its analytical approach, its operational capacity and its political inci-
dence into an indivisible whole. Agroecology is therefore a “transformative science”
(Levidow et al. 2014; Schneidewind et al., 2016), that is, an analytical approach that
incorporates a critique of the governance mechanisms adopted in the CFR (McMichael,
2009; Holt-​Giménez & Altieri, 2013) and, on the basis of transdisciplinary and par-
ticipatory perspectives, is used to design and construct social dynamics of change,
according to principles of socioecological sustainability (Méndez et al., 2013).
Indeed, we will attempt to demonstrate in this book that the food regime’s crisis
does not derive solely from its environmental impacts: the roots of the crisis lie in
the institutional rules regulating and governing the current regime. The causes should
not be confused with the consequences. Therefore, Agroecology cannot limit itself
to pointing out unsustainable factors in agroecosystems, proposing management
approaches and practices that will restore the sustainability of these factors is essen-
tial. As stated by Gliessman (2011, 347), Agroecology consists above all of powerful
instrument to achieve change in the food regime, in other words, a massive redesign
of the economic structures that govern it. This practical dimension of Agroecology
requires politics, that is, the disciplines responsible for designing and implementing
institutions that make food systems’ sustainability possible. The search for sustain-
ability implies a transformation of the dynamics of agroecosystems that can only be
achieved by social agents and their institutional mediation. Agroecology, however,
is not yet equipped with the analytical instruments and criteria required to define
strategies that could guide this change. Politics must develop within the heart of
Agroecology to provide agroecologists with instruments for analysis and socio-
political intervention that would allow them to go beyond local experiences, encour-
aging their generalization and the essential changes in the food system at a higher
territorial scale (scaling up). This book is devoted to this necessary political dimen-
sion of Agroecology; it proposes theoretical and epistemological foundations of a
new theoretical and practical field of work for agroecologists: Political Agroecology.
The purpose of this book is to establish a common framework of analysis of
agroecological collective action. Epistemological and theoretical arguments are
provided, pushing toward the development of this field of Agroecology and making
the fight for food sustainability operative. The objective is also to create a food crisis
narrative that can serve as a common framework to guide collective agroecological
action. In short, this book aims to lay the theoretical and methodological foundations
of a common agroecological strategy, covering the different levels of collective
action and the different instruments with which it can be developed.
The first chapter is dedicated to the theoretical grounding of the key role that
institutions and, therefore, politics have in the dynamics of agroecosystems and
xvi

xvi Introduction

food regimes as regulators of the energy, materials and information flows that
they exchange with their physical and social environment. The second chapter
describes the paths followed by agricultural industrialization and highlights the
main components of the institutional framework responsible for this process.
Major attention is given to describing and analyzing the emergence and hegemonic
development of the food regimes that have been governing the world since the end
of the nineteenth century. The third chapter is dedicated to characterizing, from a
sociometabolic and institutional point of view, the current crisis of the world food
system, governed by the CFR, and the risks of collapse to which its hegemony
leads. The fourth chapter begins the second most propositive part of this book,
which discusses principles and criteria for the design of institutions and the cog-
nitive frameworks that Political Agroecology must provide in order to promote a
new sustainable food regime. The chapter also discusses the most effective col-
lective action to promote food change, an action that cannot be segmented into
agroecosystem management practices, transformative social movement practices,
or institutional action: multilevel collective action that strategically combines all
these dimensions is called for. The fifth chapter discusses the best strategy for
agroecological experiences to scale out and scale up, constituting a viable alterna-
tive to the CFR. Based on this strategy, tasks are defined to be undertaken both by
the agroecological movements and for the building of local-​scale agroecological-​
based food systems. Chapter 6 addresses the major players of food change. It is
imperative that peasants and new peasants be given a key role, but not only them.
This chapter stresses the need for women and consumers to play a leading role.
Achieving social majorities of change will be difficult without their contribution.
To cement this alliance, we propose that the vast majority of citizens be organized
and mobilized around demands for food sovereignty, that is, based on food popu-
lism. Finally, Chapter 7 analyzes the experiences of public policies to date that
have favored Agroecology and, drawing lessons from these practices, proposes
policies that contribute to the upscaling of Agroecology.
The authors would like to thank Stephen Gliessman for both his intellectual
inspiration and his efforts to make this book possible. We also owe a debt of grati-
tude to Miguel Altieri, Clara Nicholls, and Ernesto Méndez for their important
recommendations regarding the writing of this book. We would like to extend
our thanks to Víctor Toledo, Jan Douwe van der Ploeg, Jaime Morales, Eric Holt-​
Giménez, Peter Rosset, Gloria Guzmán, David Soto, Daniel López García, Ángel
Calle, Eduardo Sevilla Guzmán, José Antônio Costabeber (in memoriam), the
Nucleus of Agroecology and Peasantry members of the UFRPE, Claudia Schmitt,
Eric Sabourin, Silvio Gomes de Almeida and other companions from AS-​PTA,
colleagues with whom we have collaborated toward an environmentally healthy, eco-
nomically viable, socially just and politically democratic food system. Without their
inspirations this book would not have been possible. Finally, we would like to thank
Christine Sagar for her help in the translation and linguistic revision of the manu-
script, which has clearly improved it.
1

1 Theoretical Foundations
of Political Agroecology

Agroecosystems are artificialized ecosystems that shape a particular subsystem

operating within the general metabolic flows between society and nature; therefore,
they are a product of the socioecological relations. For example, using or changing
crops is a decision that often has socioeconomic roots and, at the same time, envir-
onmental consequences. These kinds of socioecological relations are part of social
relations generally, in which power and conflict are present. Consequently, even in
the simplest societies, technologically speaking, the specific assembly of each agro-
ecosystem responds to different types of institutions, forms of knowledge, world
views, rules, norms and agreements, technological knowledge, means of commu-
nication and governance, and forms of ownership (González de Molina & Toledo,
2011, 2014). An agroecosystem’s sustainability does not result solely from a series
of physical and biological properties: it also reflects power relations. Agroecology
therefore needs to be placed within a political framework.
In this regard, the quest for sustainable agricultural ecosystems requires Political
Agroecology, which is a new way of organizing agroecosystems and agricultural
metabolism in general. In the same way that political power articulates different
subsystems in a socioenvironmental system, Political Agroecology should articulate
an agroecosystem’s different subsystems by organizing energy, material, and infor-
mation flows. Political Agroecology is tasked with this articulation, programming
and functional orientation, bringing continuity and order to the agroecosystem’s evo-
lution. This chapter seeks to define Political Agroecology and to develop its epis-
temological and theoretical basis.

1.1 POLITICAL AGROECOLOGY: A TENTATIVE DEFINITION

Political Agroecology would be the application of Political Ecology to the field
of Agroecology, or a close association between these fields (Toledo, 1999;
Forsyth, 2008), but there is no agreement as to what Political Ecology actually is
(Peterson, 2000; Blaikie, 2008, 766–​767). The term gives rise to many meanings
and understandings regarding its goal, but all of them have in common a Political
Economy approach to natural resources and its preferential application to developing
countries (Blaikie, 2008, 767). We share the interpretation of Gezon and Paulson
(2005) for whom “the control and use of natural resources, and consequently the

1
2

2 Political Agroecology

course of environmental change” are shaped by “the multifaceted relations of politics

and power, and the cultural constructions of the environment”. In this sense, Political
Ecology combines political and ecological processes when analyzing environmental
change and it could also be understood as “the politics of environmental change”
(Nigren & Rikoon, 2008, 767). Paraphrasing Blaikie and Brookfield, we could say
that “Political Ecology [is] an approach for studying ecological and social change”
(Blaikie & Brookfield, 1987), but together. In other words, Political Ecology is an
approach to studying socioecological change in political terms. Based on Paulson
et al. (2003, 209) and Walker (2007, 208), we could say that Political Agroecology
should “develop ways to apply the methods and findings [of Political Ecology
research] in addressing” socioecological change in agroecosystems and the whole
food system.
However, Political Agroecology is not only a research subject. It has another
closely related practical dimension that is regarded as a core goal: achieving agrarian
sustainability. Many agroecologists are involved in a form of “ ‘popular Political
Ecology’ that ties research directly to activist efforts to improve human well-​being
and environmental sustainability through various forms of local, grassroots activism
and organization” (Walker, 2007, 364). In this respect, Political Agroecology should
branch off into two directions: into an ideology, in competition with others, dedicated
to disseminating and turning the organization of ecologically and sustainably based
agroecosystems into the dominant system (Garrido, 1993); but also into a disciplinary
field responsible for designing and producing actions, institutions and regulations
aimed at achieving agrarian sustainability.
Political Agroecology is based on the fact that agrarian sustainability cannot be
achieved using only technological (agronomical or environmental) measures helping
to sustainably redesign agroecosystems. Without profoundly changing the institu-
tional framework in force, it will not be possible to spread successful agroecological
experiences nor to effectively combat the ecological crisis. Consequently, Political
Agroecology examines the most suitable course of action today and how to best use
the instruments that make institutional change possible. Such a change, in a world still
organized around nation states, is only possible through political mediation. In demo-
cratic systems, for example, it implies collective action through social movements,
electoral political participation, alliance games between different social forces to
build majorities of change, etc. In other words, it calls for the creation of strategies
that are essentially political. The two main objectives of Political Agroecology pre-
cisely comprise: the design of institutions (Ostrom, 1990, 2001, 2009) that favor
the achievement of agrarian sustainability, and the organization of agroecological
movements in such a way that they can be implemented.
Political Agroecology thus goes beyond proposing a specific program. For
example, the demand for alimentary sovereignty, promoted by Vía Campesina and
other social movements is a specific proposal for a program that can emerge from
applying Political Agroecology to the current conditions of the ruling food regime.
Political Agroecology is responsible for establishing it and, as a new branch of
Agroecology, it is not a political proposal or program to achieve agrarian sustain-
ability. Political Agroecology is not a new term for food sovereignty. It seeks to
produce knowledge that allows Agroecology and food sovereignty to be put into
3

Theoretical Foundations 3

practice, exploiting the knowledge accumulated by Political Ecology and the experi-
ence of social movements.
Political Agroecology thus requires to be grounded in a rigorous socioecological
framework that adequately spells out the roles of institutions and the necessary
means to establish or change them, anchored in the indissoluble nexus established
between human beings and their biophysical environment. In the sections that follow
we explore societies’ biophysical foundations and draw attention to the determining
role of institutional arrangements in their dynamics. This approach is later applied to
agroecosystems, understood as the materialization of socioecological relationships
in the field of agriculture. We also draw attention to the key role of institutions that
regulate their dynamics.

1.2 A THERMODYNAMIC APPROACH TO SOCIETY

Our conception of Political Agroecology is based on a biophysical reading of society,
in accordance with its socioecological nature: social systems are subject to the laws
of thermodynamics. That means, therefore, that the laws of nature operate on and
affect human beings and the devices they build. We thus assume that entropy is
common to all natural processes, be they human or other, and it may be the most
relevant physical law to explain the evolution over time of the human species. Our
understanding of the material structure, functioning, and dynamics of human soci-
eties is thus grounded in a thermodynamic understanding, as in the case of biological
systems which they also part of.
From a thermodynamic point of view, all human societies share the need for con-
trolled, efficient processing of energy extracted from the surroundings with other
physical and biological systems. Such is the proposal of Prigogine (1983) regarding
non-​equilibrium systems (thermodynamics of irreversible processes), which is one
of the basic concepts of our socioecological approach to power and politics: gener-
ation of order out of chaos. Because the natural trend of societies –​as any physical
and biological system –​is toward a state of maximum entropy, social systems depend
on building dissipative structures for balancing this trend and keeping away from
maximum entropy (Prigogine, 1947, 1955, 1962). These structures are maintained
thanks to the transfer by the system of a part of the energy being dissipated by its
conversion processes (Glandsorff & Prigogine, 1971, 288). The transfer takes place
by using flows of energy, materials, and information to perform work and dissipate
heat, consequently increasing their internal organization. Order emerges from tem-
poral patterns (systems) within a universe that, as a whole, moves slowly toward
thermodynamic dissipation (Swanson et al., 1997, 47). Prigogine described this con-
figuration of dissipative structures as a process of self-​organization of the system.
Although human societies share the same evolutionary precepts as physical and
biological systems, they represent an innovation that differentiates them and makes
their dynamic specific, adding complexity and connectivity to the whole evolutionary
process. Social systems cannot be explained by a simple application of the laws of
physics, even though human acts are subject to them. The reason for this is that
although evolution is a unified process, human society is an evolutionary innovation
emerging from human beings’ reflective (self-​referring) capacity, which is more
4

4 Political Agroecology

developed than in any other species. The most direct consequence of this human
mental feature is the capacity –​not exclusive among higher-​order animals, but rare –​
for building tools and, therefore, for using energy outside the organism, i.e., the use
of exosomatic energy. To build and use tools, information and knowledge needed to
be generated and transmitted, i.e., the generation of culture was required. Culture
involves a symbolic dimension containing, besides knowledge, beliefs, rules and
regulations, technologies, etc. Accordingly, evolutionary innovation encompasses
human capability regarding the exosomatic use of information, energy, and matter,
also giving rise to a new type of complex system: the reflexive complex system
(Martínez-​Alier et al., 1998, 282) or self-​reflexive system and self-​aware system (Kay
et al., 1999; Ramos-​Martin, 2003). This feature will be instrumental because it gives
social systems a unique neopoietic capacity absent from other systems or species,
and that confers an essential, creative dimension to human individuals and –​more
so –​to collective actions.
In analogy to living organisms, culture is the transmission of information by non-​
genetic means, a metaphor that became popular in the academic world. Cultural
evolution has been described as an extension of biological information by other
means (Sahlins & Service, 1960; Margalef, 1980), and a parallel has been drawn
between the diffusion of genes and that of culture. Culture can thus be understood
as an innovative manifestation of the adaptive complexity of social systems; it is the
name of a new genus of complexity provided by the environment for perpetuating
and reorganizing a particular kind of dissipative system: social systems (Tyrtania,
2008, 51). Culture is but an emergent property of human societies. Its performative
or neopoietic character, its creative nature (Maturana & Varela, 1980; Rosen, 1985,
2000; Pattee, 1995; Giampietro et al., 2006) enables the configuration of new and
more complex dissipative structures at even larger scales by means of technology
(Adams, 1988).
As we have seen, organization is an autopoietic product in which flows of infor-
mation have a definitive influence. There is no structure without information, as has
been demonstrated in the biological world (Margalef, 1995). In the social world,
systems are also subjected to the laws of thermodynamics, given that they occupy
time, space, and energetic resources. Applying thermodynamics in Boltzmann’s stat-
istical terms provides an explanation of flows as a unidirectional and irreversible
process going from its state of order –​its more evident manifestation –​to a state
of disorder, whose organizational properties have disappeared. Therefore, the main
function of these flows is negentropic: “Information, in this technical sense, is the
patterning, order, organization, or non-​randomness of a system. Shannon showed that
information (H) is the negative of entropy (S)” (Swanson et al., 1997, 47). Therefore,
flows of information are here considered capable of reordering and reorganizing the
different components of the physical, biological, and social systems in which they
function. That is, they have characteristics that produce action (change). Information
flows are the basic vital ingredients of the processes of organization of social systems.
Information is here defined in a pragmatic or operative way as a codified message,
which decision-​makers can use to regulate levels of entropy.
As H. Gintis (2009, 233) remarked, culture can also be considered as an epigen-
etic mechanism of horizontal, intragenerational transmission of information among
5

Theoretical Foundations 5

humans, i.e., the system’s memory along the evolutionary process. In sum, dissipa-
tive structures of social systems are designed and organized through culture. There is
insufficient space here to present a theory of information flows and their role in com-
plex adaptive systems. Niklas Luhmann (1984, 1998) largely developed this theory,
and we direct interested readers to his writings. Luhmann’s theory of autopoietic
social systems is useful to elaborate a theory of information flows and their role of
organizers of the dissipative structures that all societies build to compensate entropy
(disorder). In sum, the uniqueness of social systems in the evolutionary principle lies
in how they process and transmit information not by means of biological heredity,
but by means of language and symbolic codes. Culture is thus the designer of metab-
olism fund elements and the combinations of flows of energy and materials that make
them function and reproduce. However, culture also produces and reproduces the
flows of information that order and give structure to energy and materials flows. This
does not mean, however, that there are no entropic costs –​whether material, social or
regulatory –​of the physical consequences of the transmission of information.
While biological systems have a limited capacity for processing energy –​
mainly endosomatically –​due to availability in the environment and genetic load,
human societies exhibit a less-​constrained dissipative capacity that is only limited
by the environment. Human beings can thus dissipate energy by means of artifacts
or tools, i.e., through knowledge and technology, and they can do it faster and
with greater mobility than any other species. Societies adapt to the environment by
changing their structures and frontiers by means of association, integration, or con-
quest of other societies, something biological organisms cannot do. In other words,
contrary to biological systems with well-​defined boundaries, human societies can
organize and reorganize, building a capacity to avoid or overcome local limitations
from the environment. That explains why some societies maintain exosomatic con-
sumption levels beyond the means provided by their local environments without
entering into a steady state. The exosomatic consumption of energy is a specific-
ally human trait. Because no genetic load regulates such exosomatic consump-
tion, it becomes codified by culture, which involves a faster but less predictable
evolutionary rate.
Human societies give priority to two basic tasks: on the one hand, producing
goods and services and distributing them among individual society members, and
on the other hand, reproducing the conditions that make production possible in order
to gain stability over time. In thermodynamic terms, this implies building dissipa-
tive structures and exchanging energy, materials, and information with the environ-
ment so that these structures may function. A large number of social relations are
geared toward organizing and maintaining this exchange of energy, materials, and
information.

1.3 A SOCIOECOLOGICAL VIEW OF SOCIETY: SOCIAL

METABOLISM
The organization of this stable exchange of energy, materials, and information has
been called social metabolism. In other words, social metabolism pertains to the flow
of energy, materials, and information that are exchanged by a human society with its
6

6 Political Agroecology

environment for forming, maintaining, and reconstructing the dissipative structures

allowing it to keep as far away as possible from the state of equilibrium (González
de Molina & Toledo, 2014). Open systems such as human societies have managed
to create order by ensuring an uninterrupted flow of energy from their environment,
transferring the resulting entropy back to their surroundings. From a thermodynamic
perspective, the functioning and physical dynamics of societies can be understood on
the basis of this metabolic simile: any change in a system’s total entropy is the sum
of external entropy production and internal entropy production owing to the irrever-
sibility of the processes that occur within.

∆St = Sin + Sout (eq. 1)

where
∆St is the increase in total entropy
Sin is the internal entropy and
Sout is the external entropy

To put it another way, order is generated within a society at the expense of increasing
total entropy through the consumption of energy, materials, and information by its
dissipative structures or fund elements. This level of order will remain constant or
will increase if sufficient quantities of energy and materials or information are added,
creating new dissipative structures. This will in turn increase total entropy and, para-
doxically, will reduce order or make it even more costly. Complex adaptive systems
have resolved this dilemma by capturing the required flows of energy, materials,
and information from their surroundings to maintain and increase their level of neg-
entropy, transferring the entropy generated to their surroundings. In other words,
the total entropy of the system tends to increase, reducing at the same time internal
entropy, if external entropy increases. To put it another way:

⇓
Sin= ⇑ Sout (eq. 2)

Entropy is reduced by extracting energy and materials from one’s own environment
(domestic extraction) or by importing from another environment. The greater the
flow of energy and materials extracted from its own territory or imported from others
(or both at the same time), the more complex an order a society will create, increasing
its metabolic profile. For example, physical structures consume resources –​both for
their building as for their functioning –​and have been built for providing health,
education, security, food, clothing, housing, transportation, etc. The magnitude of
dissipative structures determines the amount of energy and materials consumed
by a society, that is, its metabolic profile. Each and every structure needs inputs
of a determined amount of energy, materials, and information, and evacuation to
the environment of the generated wastes. Differences in countries’ installed dissipa-
tive structures explain their differences in terms of resource consumption (Ramos-​
Martin, 2012, 73), and therefore, the differences in the sizes of their metabolisms.
These differences in the capability of generating order also indicate the differences
in the levels of economic and social well-​being.
7

Theoretical Foundations 7

Consequently, a society’s level of entropy is always a function of the relation-

ship between internal and external entropy and, therefore, it is a function of the nat-
ural asymmetrical relationship established between a society and its environment, or
between one society and another. This asymmetric relationship can even be trans-
ferred, as we will see below, to the relationship between different groups or social
classes. This is not to say that this relationship is proportional or that an increase in
one will always give rise to an increase in the other. To understand this, there is a
useful distinction between “high-​entropy” and “low-​entropy” dissipative structures.
A society that requires low amounts of energy and materials to maintain its fund
elements reduces its internal entropy, generating in turn low entropy in its environ-
ment; in other words, low levels of domestic extractions and/​or imports. In this case,
the society would produce low total entropy. In contrast, another society might need
large amounts of energy and materials from its environment and, if these are not
sufficient, it might need to import energy and materials on a large scale in order to
reduce its internal entropy. In this case, such a society would generate a much higher
level of total entropy. This asymmetrical relationship between society and the envir-
onment also translates into differentials of complexity between environment and
system, whereby the system is always much less complex than the environment. This
forms the basis of the strategy of “biomimicry” (Benyus, 1997) developed intention-
ally by humans and other high-​order species in the extraction of information from the
environment, and unintentionally by other living organisms. In fact, biomimicry is
perhaps the most determining basic principle underlying Agroecology. In this sense,
social metabolism provides Agroecology with a powerful tool for analysis and a
theoretical support capable of grounding the hybrid nature –​between culture, com-
munication, and the material world –​of any agroecosystem, whose dynamics are
explained by the interaction of rural societies with their environment (see below).
We can translate this to the accountancy language of the social metabolism meth-
odology (see Schandl et al., 2002): the total level of entropy of a society is assessed
using the proxy of the total energy it dissipates during a given year. Dividing the
members of the equation makes it easier to make comparisons among societies
and provides their metabolic profile. Hence, the level of entropy will be equal to
annual domestic energy consumption (DEC year–​1), and the metabolic profile will
be equal to annual domestic energy consumption per capita per year (DEC popula-
tion number–​1 year–​1). Accordingly, Prigogine’s equation as formulated in equation 1
would take the form:

DEC = DEI –​ Ex, (eq. 3)

becoming
DEI = DE + Im

then
DEC = DE + Im –​  Ex

where DEC = domestic energy consumption, DEI = direct energy input, Ex = exports,
Im = imports, and DE = domestic extraction.
8

8 Political Agroecology

On one side, societies with funds needing low dissipation of energy and low
consumption of materials for their maintenance are low-​entropy societies that
generate low levels of entropy in their environments, i.e., low levels of domestic
extraction or imports. On the other side, societies can only sustain high levels of
total entropy if large amounts of energy and materials are appropriated from their
domestic environment, and if these were locally insufficient, from large imports of
energy and materials. This asymmetric relation between society and the environ-
ment is also equivalent in differentials of complexity between the environment and
the system.
Social practice and social relations are not explainable by the analysis of energy
and matter alone, but are not explainable without the analysis of such flows.
Reciprocally, social relations represented by flows of information order and con-
dition material exchanges with nature. In other words, the material relations with
the natural world that connect human beings with their biophysical environment
are a dimension of social relations, and as such do not account for its entirety. The
specific realm of socioecological relations is the space of intersection between the
social sphere –​whose structures and functioning rules are self-​referential –​and
the natural sphere, also with its own evolutionary dynamic. Hence, we theorize
about the material structure, functioning, and dynamics of human societies on
the grounds of a thermodynamic understanding of human societies as biological
systems, which they also are. Such a thermodynamic conception lies in the key role
played by entropy, both in relations with the biophysical environment and within
societies themselves.

1.4 SOCIAL ENTROPY

Some academics have suggested that social dynamics could also be understood in
line with the second principle of thermodynamics. Among them is Kenneth Bailey
(1990, 1997a, 1997b, 2006a, 2006b), who elaborated a Theory of Social Entropy,
attempting to measure it through an indicator of a society’s internal state: the level
of disorder as a temporal variable. Bailey’s approach is also based on the statis-
tical interpretation of entropy of Boltzmann (1964). Statistical entropy may refer
to the degree of disorder in social actors’ interactions and level of communication
(Swanson et al., 1997, 61). Following Adams (1975), a broad concept of energy
is applicable here, such as capacity for performing work or its physical equivalent
potential energy, i.e., the capacity for modifying things. Asides from the physical
flows already considered (physical entropy), this faculty is possessed by flows of
information capable of creating dissipative structures that revert social entropy, a
synonym of disorder (Boulding, 1978).
Indeed, for Niklas Luhmann (1986, 1995) human beings (psychic systems) do not
belong to social systems but to nature as biological entities, an animal species with
special characteristics. Social systems are exclusively made up of communication
and function by generating knowledge, i.e., symbols. Psychic systems do not com-
municate directly among themselves –​because their nervous systems cannot interact
directly –​but through a social system and in doing that, they reproduce that social
system. All communicative acts are inherently social and vice versa: there cannot be
9

Theoretical Foundations 9

any communication outside the social system. The components of the social system
are precisely the communicative acts, given that systems are built from communi-
cation, which starts: “by an alteration of the acoustic state of the atmosphere” (lan-
guage) (Echevarría, 1998, 143). In that context, entropy is defined as the uncertainty
of communication and is in reality an inverse measurement of information. For its
part, information, according to Shannon, is the measure of the reduction in statistical
entropy, i.e., of disorder (Mavrofides et al., 2011, 360).
Morin (1977) said that under certain circumstances, interactions become
interrelations –​as associations, unions, combinations, etc. –​and generate forms of
social organization. In contrast, egotistic, free rider behaviors are the opposite of
cooperation and tend to generate conflictive frictions. Individuals, social groups, and
nation states can adopt a competitive behavior. Social disorder must not be identified
with anarchy, but with the total absence of cooperation, which makes it very difficult
to organize the activities for social and ecological reproduction, i.e., to maintain the
flow of social metabolism. It is not possible to maintain in a stable way the metabolic
activity (which ensures the required distance with respect to the thermodynamic
equilibrium) without a certain degree of social cooperation.
Continuing with the analogy and adopting an isomorphic perspective regarding
thermodynamic laws, social relations can be understood as frictions (a term used
in Tribology) between social actors, be the latter individuals or institutions (Santa
Marín & Toro Betancur, 2015). These frictions are, therefore, uncoordinated and
uncooperative interactions that have an effect on social organization. The impossi-
bility of cooperation is what makes societies’ survival unviable, or in analogy with
thermal death, it leads to social death. Therefore, societies in thermodynamic equi-
librium are societies in which living in coexistence is impossible. Social disorder
would result from social friction motivated by divergent interests, or by competition
for scarce resources, i.e., from social conflicts. In that sense, the asymmetries in the
allotment of goods and services are, and have always been, powerful stimulators
of conflictive frictions. The social energy that becomes degraded and cannot be
reinvested in social work can translate into social protests, violent clashes, crimin-
ality, bureaucracy, and above all indicators, into exploitation and lack of cooperation.
The permanent character of social frictions or conflicts distinguishes this conception
from a radical structuralist and functionalist perspective.
Our proposal is far from Bailey’s approach (1990), in which social entropy is
the product of the dysfunction caused by assigning macrosocial mutable factors
(population, territory, information, life standard, technology, and organization) to
microsocial immutable characteristics of individuals (skin pigmentation, sex, and
age). While Bailey’s characterization of social entropy is far removed from func-
tionalism, it shares its forbiddance of individuals’ and groups’ capacity to perform,
i.e., it omits the capacity of individuals and social groups to change (neopoiesis).
Put another way, Bailey’s conception places human beings in a condition of alien-
ation. In any case, a more congruent conception with socioecological reality must
arise from recognizing that human actions, either individual or collective, are cap-
able of increasing the social system’s total entropy, or of decreasing it, producing
order. Entropy and negentropy are possible results of human actions and practices.
Negentropic conflicts generate highly efficient forms of cooperative coordination
10

10 Political Agroecology

that drive dissipative institutional structures, replacing entropy by information.

Conversely, entropic conflicts destroy forms of cooperative coordination, increasing
social entropy. As shown by Robert Axelrod, cooperative coordination is the most
efficient and adaptive way of crowning social interaction (Axelrod, 2004). A large
part of socioenvironmental conflicts such as the struggles of peasant and indigenous
communities against mining extractivism are examples of negentropic conflicts;
the destruction of common resources and the privatization of land are examples of
entropic results.
In short, strictly speaking, no social entropy or a second principle of thermodynamics
governs “social energies”. We consider “social entropy” as an analogy that highlights
the key role of information flows in the fight against entropy. Information is used by
human beings to build and operate the dissipative structures that keep society away
from thermodynamic equilibrium. In that sense, from a physical perspective, certain
types of social relationships constitute information flows that prevent individualistic
or egoistic behavior from putting an end to society. For example, social relations
favoring cooperation are much more efficient than those favoring non-​cooperation.
In terms of Tribology, cooperation decreases the wear caused by increased frictions
(inherent to complexity) by means of designing such frictions (institutional relations)
and of their lubrication (motivation) in stimuli and penalizations. Friction is the result
of a conflict, or better, friction is conflict: a relation of competition and confrontation
between two individuals or groups. Frictions (conflicts) can be regulated coopera-
tively or be deregulated non-​cooperatively. The underlying wear in non-​cooperative
deregulation is much more severe and the motivation much weaker than in coopera-
tive regulation. Observe the difference between the ordered evacuation of a crowd
from inside a stadium guided by rules, signals, and counting, with accessible exit
areas, and the same crowd evacuating the stadium by means of chaotic movements
against one another. The amount of frictions (physical contacts) and the amount of
wear decrease in an ordered evacuation compared to a chaotic evacuation.
An example of misunderstanding of how incoordination leads to high levels of
physical entropy can be found in the so-​called tragedy of the commons (Hardin,
1968), in which the responsibility of grassland is assigned to the community owning
it. Certainly, an aggregated set of individual, non-​coordinated behaviors leads to
an unsustainable level of exploitation of any resource; but as shown by E. Ostrom
(2015a), what leads to overexploitation is the lack of communal management, not vice
versa. Individual, non-​coordinated action is an example of maximum friction gener-
ating an increase of physical entropy, but also the increase of social entropy in the
long term due to growing inequity and scarcity of resources. The granting of property
rights (a market alternative proposed by Hardin) or the centralized management of
an external, coercive regulator (stratification alternative) are possible answers to the
problem of individual incoordination. Yet, as shown by Ostrom (2015a), they carry
their own dose of entropy from incentivizing competition and inequity. Communal,
cooperative management of resources is the form of coordination that generates least
social, political, and physical entropy because it minimizes social frictions, and with
that, disincentives non-​cooperative behaviors.
Put another way, the information within systems has the function of establishing
coordination and cooperation subsystems that reduce frictions, hence also entropy.
11

Theoretical Foundations 11

A society’s “thermal death” would be equivalent to the total absence of cooperative

behaviors that would make the functioning of the metabolism with the environment
impossible, leading to thermal equilibrium. Information flows therefore have the
mission of ensuring the necessary coordination between individuals so that meta-
bolic activity may take place.

1.5 INSTITUTIONS AND SOCIAL INEQUITY

As seen above, changes in a system’s entropy are always asymmetrical, hence
unequal, relative to both terms of the equation: internal and external entropy levels.
The environment and its resources, either in domestic or in other society’s territory,
pay the costs of this asymmetry. Asymmetry is thus at the core of each dissipative
process because these processes operate following two contrary directions: produ-
cing work (order) and generating unusable heat (disorder) (Hacyan, 2004). Inequality
is thus the bucketing of order in one direction, and of disorder in the opposite dir-
ection. This dichotomy also powerfully stimulates the interactions between individ-
uals and groups in their quest for more energy and materials to maintain order and
decrease disorder. In that context, a major part of social relations is aimed at exchan-
ging energy, materials, information, and wastes.
Therefore, inequality between social groups is a socially established mechanism
of transference of entropy, which may generate more entropy if not counterweighed
by more energy and materials from the environment or by socially built negentropic
structures. It also means that rising social complexity is often the result of social
inequity or, said differently, as inequality increases –​a process apparently peaking
at present –​more energy and materials have been consumed, increasing complexity.
Why are capitalism and its industrial metabolic regime based on increased inequality?
Because they require transferring the high entropy they generate to their social or ter-
ritorial surroundings.
Consequently, asymmetry is applicable to relations between groups or classes
within a society and has direct consequences on their environment. For instance,
a social group can push toward the overexploitation of one or more resources if it
accumulates or consumes a growing proportion of the energy and materials avail-
able to a society within its territory. In other words, the creation of internal order
by a human group can have consequences on the society’s environment as a whole.
An example makes this fact more graphical: in feudal or tributary societies based on
organic metabolism, rent increase forced peasants to offer a portion of their crop, or
other natural resource, to the detriment of the amount needed for self-​consumption,
and could push them to clear new plots, fish or hunt more individuals, and extract or
gather a higher volume of products.
Following the thermodynamic analogy, we could reformulate Prigogine’s equation
to apply it to social systems: the change in social entropy of a given human social
group is directly related with (physical) entropy and its distribution through society.
For example, units of social organization with proper coherence and identity (e.g.,
social classes) can increase their internal order or well-​being by transferring their
(physical) entropy to other social classes or to society as a whole. The appropriation
by a social group of the surplus (a determined amount of energy or materials) is but
12

12 Political Agroecology

a way of obtaining order at the expense of other social groups that will experience an
increase in their level of entropy. It is a form of socio-​thermodynamic exploitation.
Such has been the usual behavior of societies, according to Flannery and Marcus
(2012), at least since the past 2,500 years, based on competitive social relations and
the institutionalization of social inequity. Since then, conflicts and inequality seem
to have amplified throughout history until the present. The same can be said about
the asymmetric relation between dominant and dominated kingdoms or states, which
becomes evident in industrial metabolism, countries, and social classes showing
marked differences in levels of social inequity. On the contrary, the predominance
of cooperative social relations and institutions favor equity aids to reduce “social
entropy”. An obvious relationship can be established between social and physical
entropy. Increasing physical entropy has been one of the most recurring ways of
compensating for rising social entropy, as we will see further down.
In view of the asymmetrical relationship, human societies have built dissipative
structures of a social nature (see below) based on cooperation and equity, without
which social life and evolutionary success itself would be impossible, given that
maximizing asymmetry would lead to disorder or thermodynamic equilibrium.
Nevertheless, free-​rider behaviors are common among human groups, who, to maxi-
mize their order, increase entropy throughout society, those deprived of enough
dissipative structures being the most damaged. This behavior is evident both in the
struggle for resources (energy, materials, and information) as in the fight to avoid
the effects of entropic disorder (e.g., pollution). This is when conflicts arise from
power relations (between individuals or groups) and control relations (of individuals
or groups over the flows of energy and materials; Adams, 1975).

1.6 POLITICS AND ENTROPY

All species have developed phenotypic (endogenous) plasticity mechanisms with
which to respond adaptively to changes in the environment. The human species has
gone much further and has managed, using exosomatic or technological mechanisms,
to modify its own environment and somewhat adapt it to its own interests to such
an extent that the environment has become vulnerable. One of these technological
mechanisms has consisted in creating coordinated and intentional interaction
systems, that is, institutions. Paraphrasing Ian Wright (2005), we could say that a
society consists of vast numbers of people constantly interacting and huge numbers
of degrees of individual freedom. Its behavior could be considered as similar to that
exhibited by randomizing machines that maximize entropy, subject to constraints.
Entropy is here understood as a number that measures the randomness of a distri-
bution. In this sense, the higher the entropy, the more random the distribution. The
individual behavior randomizes the distribution of social energy in the system and
increases its (social) entropy. However, society builds social institutions (dissipa-
tive structures made of information fluxes) to prevent entropy maximization or to
reduce it. As Wright argues, “at a micro level the system scrambles and randomizes.
Basically, anything can happen. But at the macro level there are global constraints
that are always observed. So there’s an interaction between forces that randomise,
and forces that order … There’s some kind of obstacle in the system that acts to
13

Theoretical Foundations 13

reduce the randomness a little bit”. This is what happens, for example, in completely
unregulated markets: they tend to maximize the system’s entropy. According to
Wright (2017), this fact could explain the inequality: “So the anarchy of the market
is the primary and essential cause of economic inequality … Since people are free
to trade then entropy increases and the distribution of money becomes unequal”.
Regulations thus add constraints to the system, reducing entropy, that is to say, redu-
cing random (unequal) distribution.
Institutions can thus be defined as formal (explicit) or informal (implicit) rules
(routines, procedure, codes, shared beliefs, practices) aimed at regulating the entropy
that arises from the coordination of social interactions between individuals (Schotter,
1981) and between them and their natural environment. This understanding has a
twofold explanatory and regulatory dimension: entropy indicates both the evolu-
tionary origin of the institutions and the teleological function they fulfill. A level
of entropy, disorder, and loss of work in the transformation process can be found
in all types of interactions there, but in the case of living systems intentionality,
reflexive or not, adds to the interaction (Dennett, 1996), increasing the complexity.
In the case of human social systems, where mechanisms of natural cultural selection
operate, regulating entropy becomes more sophisticated and is expressed in flex-
ible and contingent rules through institutions. Of all institutions, we are especially
interested in political institutions. Our interest lies in the fact that they represent the
highest degree of complexity in their regulation of social interactions, on a scale of
interactive density that is equally high.
In our proposal of agroecological theory of politics, entropy would explain the
causes, functions, and mechanisms that create and give meaning to forms of power
(regulation) from micro to macro (State) levels of political power. Family, commu-
nity, State, are examples of negentropic structures and so is any efficient form of
social regulation. As a consequence, social institutions in the broadest sense –​under-
stood as any stable social practice or relation subjected to rules, although these may
be informal –​and also in the narrowest sense of state public institutions, must be seen
as socioecological relations tasked with regulating both social and physical entro-
pies. In other terms, political power manages entropy by means of generating dissi-
pative structures in the physical, political, and social realms.

1.7 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS: THE TRADE-​OFF BETWEEN

SOCIAL AND PHYSICAL ENTROPY
An entropic theory of regulatory institutions claims that there is an isomorphism
between the three dimensions of entropy (physical, political, and social; Figure 1.1),
such that more social entropy (inequity) is corresponded by more physical entropy.
Therefore, the function of political regulators is to synchronize social metabolism at
its two extremes (biosphere and society) in the knowledge that the regulatory function
itself implies an inherent entropic cost, hence regulating the entropy generated by
regulation itself. This confers a high degree of complexity and self-​reflexivity to pol-
itical institutions that cannot be substituted by simple self-​management mechanisms.
Indeed, the effects generated by social and physical entropy, i.e., the type of
disorder they trigger, are different. Physical entropy expresses itself as ecological
14

14 Political Agroecology

FIGURE 1.1 The Triangle of Entropies.

problems and its effects are of a physical nature. Social entropy expresses itself as
social conflict and destructuration (confrontations, inequity, and absence of cooper-
ation, criminality, and poverty). However, there is an evident trade-​off between social
and physical entropies that, from our standpoint, is useful for explaining the evolu-
tionary dynamics of social systems. Social entropy translates (or rather transduces, a
neurology term for communication mechanisms that convert environmental signals
into neurophysiological states) the level of physical entropy, and in turn, social
entropy produces a certain level of physical entropy. Thus, there is a bidirectional
correlation between both types of entropy, which can be formalized by once again
using Prigogine’s equation 1 expressed above:

SESt = (SSin + PhSin) + (SSout + PhSout) (eq. 4)

where SESt = socioecological entropy, SSin = internal social entropy, PhSin = internal
physical entropy, SSout = external social entropy, and PhSout = external physical
entropy.
For example, inequity produces situations that tend to increase social entropy,
e.g., bringing a society or a social group closer to disorder or chaos, generating pov-
erty or scarcity or even starvation. Usually, societies compensate such increment by
importing a certain amount of energy and materials from the environment to gen-
erate order. For example, rising exosomatic consumption over the past two centuries
has been the system’s answer to growing inequalities threatening to raise social
entropy to unsustainable levels. In this interpretation of social entropy, exosomatic
consumption turns into an instrument compensating the maintenance of an unfair
social system through the construction and installation of new, more costly, dissipa-
tive structures, reducing internal entropy and in parallel raising external entropy, i.e.,
transferring entropy to the environment.
This bidirectional relation is mediated by regulatory or institutional mechanisms,
which are also subject to the principle of entropy (political or institutional entropy).
Inefficient social allotment of resources generates a reaction of tension (conflict)
15

Theoretical Foundations 15

and the associated information generates negentropic structures (institutions), which

are but filters, sensors, or institutional programmers responsible for detecting and
compensating social entropy by means of physical entropy, or vice versa. Therefore,
political power, the regulator and producer of information and coordination, has
a negentropic function. The paradox lies in the fact that this negentropic function
generates its own entropy. The positive equilibrium between negentropy and entropy
marks the limits of validity and success of a determined form of political power.
Political power reduces entropy by means of fostering the coordination between the
different stakeholders (individuals and institutions) involved in social metabolism.
Cooperation is in itself the less-​entropic form of coordination (Axelrod, 2004). The
democratic State and society represent a form of cooperative coordination that can
occur in societies with high demographic and technological complexities.
Until the first symptoms of the ecological crisis appeared, capitalist societies
reduced their levels of both types of entropy –​social and political –​by transferring it
to the biophysical environment, hence increasing physical entropy:

▼PS + ▼SS→ ∆PhS (eq. 5)

where: ▼PS = decrease in political entropy, ▼SS = decrease in social entropy, and
∆PhS = increase in physical entropy.
However, the environment of all societies, i.e., the natural part formed by the bio-
sphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, etc., is a closed system receiving energy only from
the outside, not an open system exchanging energy and material with its surroundings.
Thus, the possibilities of compensating for social and political entropy through the
establishment of more and larger dissipative structures of energy and materials, i.e.,
by elevating physical entropy, have obvious environmental limits. In fact, the current
economic–​financial crisis is a clear example of the unfeasibility of this compen-
sation model, because the crisis is caused by the difficulties of maintaining eco-
nomic growth in a context of increasingly limited natural resources (see Chapter 3).
The impossibility of further increasing physical entropy is responsible for the rising
levels of social and political entropy, even in developed countries. Therefore, polit-
ical power has to manage political entropy (distribution of power and status), social
entropy (distribution of resources), and physical entropy (exchange between society
and nature), and at the same time, the interactions between all three entropies. From
the latter perspective, the liberal myth of the radical separation between political
society and civil society is further unjustifiable.
In sum, the function of political institutions is to control and minimize physical
and social entropies by means of flows of information, but also by means of man-
aging its own internal entropy (transaction costs, bureaucracy, political oligarchies,
centralized decisions, war, etc.). The entropic propensity of political institutions
(Niskanen theorem) is an unavoidable price institutions must pay due to the nature
of negentropic institutions in the physical and social realms. In that sense, it is
important to distinguish between the operative entropy of political regulators (highly
entropic institutional designs such as dominant valuation languages in conventional
economics, neoclassical macroeconomic indicators such as gross domestic product
(GDP) or the use of market prices as a unique indicator of value) and the political
16

16 Political Agroecology

regulator’s internal, functional entropy that translates into centralized decisions,

high costs of transactions, bureaucracy, etc. Political institutions reduce social and
physical entropy by increasing their internal entropy. That makes political proposals
characterized by minimal statism or deregulation dangerous (entropic). These
proposals may be somewhat popular or intuitively successful because they alleviate
us from the State’s strong entropic propensity and that of regulatory institutions, but
the risk is greater still: that of increasing social and physical entropy.

1.8 CONFLICT, PROTEST, AND METABOLIC CHANGE

Some social relations or interactions create organizational forms that become sources
of conflicting frictions, and thus of potential disorder, for example: unequal allotment
of goods, services, and wastes; decoupling between population size and resource
availability; reproductive failures; or the patriarchal system of discrimination by the
sex–​gender subsystem. In this sense, different forms of social inequity are the main
source of conflictive friction and, therefore, of “social entropy”. Conflicts originate in
this context of unequal distribution of resources. Its entropic or negentropic resolution
will depend on the cooperative, coercive or competitive orientation finally adopted.
Social inequality is expressed by the unequal assignation of goods and services among
social groups or their territories, thus creating hierarchic societies. A physical inter-
pretation of this social disequilibrium is the unequal distribution of flows of energy
and materials, and of recycling of wastes –​i.e., the ecosystems’ absorption service. In
the absence of equalization forces, the random (entropic) tendency as a universal bio-
physical law tends toward the concentration of resources in a tiny minority of species
or social classes, both in biological ecosystems and in social systems. These equal-
izing forces are “natural enemies” in ecosystems and institutions in social systems.
If, for various reasons, natural enemies disappear or decline, and institutions called
to regulate social entropy are inhibited or specialize in fostering social asymmetries,
inequality expands (Scheffer et al., 2017). Social death or society’s thermal equilib-
rium would be the result of maximum friction caused by an extreme inequality in
the distribution of metabolic flows that guarantee the distance from thermal death.
Just as the most entropic metabolic regimes are those that work with a high degree
of energy dissipation, the most entropic social systems are those that lack coopera-
tive institutions concentrating resources in a small portion of society. Social entropy
(inequality) is thus the result of a lack of cooperation that prevents or restricts access
to services provided by dissipative structures created by society.
Certainly, the unequal access and distribution of resources in a broad sense,
including material and immaterial resources, has historically been a permanent
source of conflicts and social protest. However, they have also been, paradoxically,
a powerful driving force of the historical evolution of societies and their metabolic
configuration. Social protest emerging from conflicts is one more factor thrusting
metabolic change and, according to the historical circumstances, can even become
the most decisive of all. Consequently, they must be taken into account when studying
the evolutionary dynamics of social metabolism and the socioecological relations
between different human groups. The same must be said about the dynamics of
agroecosystems.
17

Theoretical Foundations 17

Hence, social protests have a contradictory impact on their environment in the

form of entropy or negentropy: they can produce order or disorder, increase or
decrease social and physical entropy. One example is the positive conservation effect
of the communal defense of forests pursued for a long time by indigenous commu-
nities, removing forests from markets and avoiding their clearing; in contrast, the
struggle of peasant laborers in Spain and Italy during the mid-​twentieth century,
within an uncontested framework of capitalistic competition, caused an increase
in labor costs due to a rise in wages, which indirectly and unintentionally favored
the mechanization of most agrarian tasks. This mechanization implied the use, by
agriculture, of massive amounts of fossil fuel. There was, despite the environmental
effects, a tangible improvement in peasants’ poor living conditions.
Collective action is a basic component of the autopoietic, and even neopoietic
capabilities of social systems. It is often guided by common objectives of the indi-
viduals participating in the conflict. Thus, from the standpoint of intentionality,
collective action can promote the construction of dissipative structures to decrease
internal entropy (disorder), also reducing or transferring the external entropy to the
physical environment. The crucial factor is the character of dissipative structures
(high or low entropy) built by a self-​organization process promoted by collective
action. In that sense, and differently from conflict, social protest as a collective action
cannot be understood as a part of disorder itself, but as a generator of negentropy.
Consequently, a protest rising from social conflict and guided by an agenda to change
the dominant metabolic regime may give rise from its initial stages to the gestation
of dissipative –​negentropic –​structures that decrease internal disorder as well as,
simultaneously, the consumption of energy and materials, so that the transference
of entropy to the environment –​i.e., the external entropy –​is minimized. Disorder
through social protest (high-​quality, low-​entropy information) can generate a new,
self-​organized and coherent emergent order.
Conflicts can balance or further unbalance a social group’s internal and external
entropies. Usually, protest arising from an environmental conflict –​especially ecolo-
gist protests –​help internalizing environmental costs and, while they do not succeed
in changing social metabolism instantaneously, they improve the negative effects
on the environment and open the way toward metabolic transformation. They thus
function as reducers of the system’s internal entropy, i.e., they reduce the amount
of entropic flow that is transferred to the physical–​biological environment. In that
sense, environmental protest can generate social actions promoting a change in the
structure and composition of a more sustainable social metabolism, but they can also
promote the appropriation and use of more energy and materials, raising external
entropy to the level of total entropy, as is the case in most modern armed conflicts
between nation states or their coalitions. However, the separation between social
(class) and environmental (species) conflict, a typical dissociation of the industrial
metabolic regime, has obvious risks: social conflict may end up increasing meta-
bolic entropy (environmental degradation), while environmental conflict may end
up increasing social entropy (inequality), both entropies growing in a fatal loop of
negative synergies. In this perverse way, the dissociation between environmental and
social conflict can reverse the negentropic nature of these conflicts into an objectively
entropic outcome. For example, conflicts over wage improvements after the Second
18

18 Political Agroecology

World War were compensated by substituting human labor with capital (machines),
increasing the consumption of energy and materials. Today, attempts to reduce green-
house gas emissions by increasing fuel prices hurt workers who live on the outskirts
of cities with restricted access to public transport or provide transport services in
small enterprises. When protest only considers environmental damage and not social
damage or vice versa, the risk of this happening is very high.

1.9 POLITICS IN AGROECOSYSTEMS

As we have seen, the theoretical framework developed so far could be applied to
socioecological relationships, whatever their scale or territorial scope. It can there-
fore be applied to agroecosystems and to food systems as a whole.
In doing so, agrarian social metabolism (ASM) or agrarian metabolism (AM) can
be described as the exchange of energy, materials, and information that agroecosystems
perform with their socioecological environment. The purpose of metabolic activity
is that of appropriating biomass to satisfy human species’ endosomatic consump-
tion directly or indirectly through livestock while providing basic ecosystem ser-
vices. AM has also tried to satisfy societies’ exosomatic demands (raw materials
and energy) with an organic metabolism and continues to do so, to a lesser extent,
in industrial societies. To accomplish this, society colonizes or seizes a part of the
available land. Within this territory, it establishes varying degrees of intervention or
interference in the ecosystems’ structure, functioning and dynamics, giving rise to
different types of agroecosystems. In other words, AM refers to the appropriation of
biomass by members of a society by managing the agroecosystems present on the
land (Guzmán Casado & González de Molina, 2017).
According to the thermodynamic approach that we have been following,
agroecosystems can also be considered as complex adaptive systems that dissipate
energy to counteract the law of entropy (Prigogine, 1978; Jørgensen & Fath, 2004).
To do this, they exchange energy, materials and information with their environment
(Fath et al., 2004; Ulanowicz, 2004; Jørgensen et al., 2007; Swannack & Grant, 2008).
Compared to ecosystems, which still retain their capacity to self-​sustain, self-​repair,
and self-​reproduce, agroecosystems are unstable, requiring external energy, materials,
and information (Toledo, 1993; Gliessman, 1998). The flows are exchanged through
work or manipulations that aim at ensuring the production of biomass and its reiter-
ation over successive cycles of cultivation or breeding, interfering in the carbon,
nutrients and hydrological cycles and in the mechanisms of biotic regulation. In
traditionally managed agroecosystems, this input of additional energy and materials
comes from biological sources: human work and animal labor. Dependence on the
land is maintained in a strict sense. In industrially managed agroecosystems, additional
energy and materials also come from the direct and indirect use of fossil fuels as well as
metallic and non-​metallic minerals. In short, they are part of society’s general metab-
olism, specifically dedicated to the appropriation of photosynthesis products.
From a metabolic point of view, the reproductive dynamic of agroecosystems is
peculiar. Their sustainability, as artificialized ecosystems, also depends on their level
of biodiversity, the maintenance of a fertile soil, etc. This means that part of the
generated biomass must be recirculated to meet both productive and basic reproductive
19

Theoretical Foundations 19

functions of the agroecosystem itself: seeds, animal labor, organic matter in the soil,
functional biodiversity, etc. The thermodynamic rationale underlying this charac-
teristic was developed by Mae-​Wan Ho and Robert Ulanowicz (2005), and later by
Ho (2013), when they related sustainability to dissipative low-​entropy structures.
Ecosystems, as dissipative structures that can consume large amounts of energy or the
reverse, can be structured in such a way that their entropy is low. This characteristic
of ecosystems also works at different scales for agroecosystems and even for AM as a
whole. Like ecosystems, agroecosystems constitute an arrangement of biotic and abi-
otic components in which living systems predominate and respond to what has been
called “thermodynamics of organized complexity” (Ho & Ulanowicz, 2005, 41, 45).
This means that, going beyond the point raised by Prigogine (1962), an agroecosystem
can be “far from thermodynamic equilibrium on account of the enormous amount of
stored, coherent energy mobilized within the system, but also that this macroscop-
ically non-​equilibrium regime is made up of a nested dynamic structure that allows
both equilibrium and non-​equilibrium approximations to be simultaneously satisfied
at different levels”. In this sense, the really decisive aspect of ecosystems is not only
the flows of energy and materials that keep them away from thermodynamic equi-
librium, but also their capacity to capture and store the energy that circulates inside
them and transfer it to its different components (Ho & Ulanowicz, 2005, 41–​45).
This depends on the quality and quantity of circuits or internal loops through which
the energy flows circulate as well as whether they are able to compensate for the
entropy generated somewhere in the ecosystem by the negative entropy generated
in another system within a given period of time. As Bulatkin (2012, 732) argues,
“the agroecosystem as a natural-​anthropogenic system has its own biogeocenotic and
biogeochemical mechanisms and self-​regulation structures, which should be used
to reduce anthropogenic energy costs”. That is, it contains cycles that, according to
Ulanowicz (1983), have a “thermodynamic sense”: “Cycles enable the activities to
be coupled, or linked together, so that those yielding energy can transfer the energy
directly to those requiring energy, and the direction can be reversed when the need
arises. These symmetrical, reciprocal relationships are most important for sustaining
the system” (Ho & Ulanowicz, 2005, 43).
For example, in organic or agrarian metabolic regimes (González de Molina
& Toledo, 2011, 2014), agroecosystems used to function in an integrated manner.
Biogeochemical cycles clearly went beyond the cultivated lands and extended over
large parts of the territory. The increase in entropy that occurred in the most inten-
sively cultivated areas (irrigation or hedges, in the case of the Mediterranean) was
usually compensated by the import of nitrogen through livestock (manure) from
other areas of low entropy such as forest areas. The result was a metabolic regime
that was also of low entropy. Spatial heterogeneity and agrosilvopastoral integration
was the key for articulating the different circuits that captured, stored and trans-
ferred energy.1

1
As pointed out by Sieferle (2001, 20), different land uses were linked to different types of energy.
Cultivated lands were associated with the production of metabolic energy to provide human food; the
pasture land that fed farm animals was associated with mechanical energy and forests with the thermal
energy that provided the fuel needed for cooking, heating and manufacturing.
20

20 Political Agroecology

This explains why, when different agroecosystem components are adequately

articulated, it is possible to substantially reduce incurred land costs whenever bio-
mass is produced, and thus generate the largest amount of biomass at a minimal land
cost (Guzmán & González de Molina, 2009; Guzmán et al., 2011). In this sense, net
primary production is found to correlate positively with the functional integration of
different land uses in terms of territorial efficiency. The bigger the amount of energy
captured and stored in the internal cycles of agroecosystems, the smaller the amount
of energy that will have to be imported from outside (Guzmán Casado & González
de Molina, 2017). For this reason, it is often commented (Gliessman, 1998) that
the more an agroecosystem resembles natural ecosystems in its organization and
functioning, the greater its sustainability.

1.10 FUNDS AND FLOWS IN AGRARIAN METABOLISM

We have defined AM as the exchange of energy, materials, and information between
agroecosystems and their socioecological environment. This exchange is composed
of flows that go in and out. These flows have a dual function: they maintain and
make the dissipative structures or fund elements work. The distinction between
flows and funds was borrowed from Nicholas Georgescu-​Roegen (1971) and Mario
Giampietro and colleagues (Giampietro et al., 2014). According to Georgescu-​
Roegen, the economy’s ultimate goal is not the production and consumption of
goods and services, but the reproduction and improvement of the processes neces-
sary for their production and consumption. This different understanding of eco-
nomic activity’s main objective implies that from a biophysical point of view, we
need to shift our attention away from energy and material flows and instead focus
on fund elements, in this case AM: we must pay attention to whether fund elements
are improved or at least reproduced during each productive cycle. In other words,
our focus switches from the production and consumption of goods and services to
sustainability, and whether both production and consumption can be maintained
indefinitely.
Flows include energy and materials that are consumed or dissipated during the
metabolic process, such as raw materials or fossil fuels. The rhythm of these flows
is controlled by external factors –​relating to the accessibility of the environment’s
resources in which the metabolic activity unfolds –​and by internal factors –​related
to the processing capacity of energy and materials, relying in turn on the technology
used and the knowledge to manage it. Fund elements are dissipative structures that
use inputs to transform them into goods, services and waste, i.e., into outputs, within
a given time scale; they remain constant during the dissipative process (Scheidel &
Sorman, 2012). They process energy, materials, and information at a rate determined
by their own structure and function. To do so, they need to be periodically renewed
or reproduced. This means that part of the inputs must be used in the construction,
maintenance and reproduction of the fund elements, limiting, of course, their own
processing rhythm (Giampietro et al., 2008). The quantities of energy and materials
invested in the maintenance and reproduction of the fund elements cannot be
employed for end uses. These types of elements can even be improved over time,
when energy and materials are allocated for this purpose.
21

Theoretical Foundations 21

Land, livestock, the agrarian population who manages the agroecosystems, and
technical means of production or technical capital are all examples of fund elements.
Depending on the purpose of the analysis, each of these funds could be split into
different funds. For example: land could be divided into various fund elements, e.g.,
biodiversity, ability to replenish nutrients, organic matter content, etc. In this sense,
it is relevant to differentiate between fund elements of a biophysical nature and fund
elements of a social nature because they are not reproduced in the same way. All
of them are closely connected and represent the fullest manifestation of the socio-
ecological relationships at the heart of each agroecosystem and at the center of the
metabolic exchange. The articulation between the fund elements is fundamental, as
we shall see later, to explain metabolic dynamics.
Depending on its biophysical or social nature, each fund element works with
different quality flows and different metrics. Fund elements require a quantity of
energy in terms of biomass and human work that must be taken into account for each
production process. The process of industrialization of agriculture has consisted in
substituting the agroecosystems’ biogeochemical circuits with working capital that
depends on resources outside the agrarian sector, usually via markets. This explains a
fundamental difference in the metabolic functioning of traditional and industrialized
agroecosystems: the reproduction of fund elements was possible through biomass
flows in organic metabolic regimes; but under the industrial metabolic regime,
external fossil energy flows are widely reproduced by social funds and can cause
environmental deterioration when attempting to reproduce biophysical funds, espe-
cially agroecosystem services. For example, trophic chains that support both edaphic
life and other organisms within the agroecosystem’s biodiversity can generally only
be fed with biomass. Deterioration of colonized or appropriated land cannot be
compensated using energy and external materials or any other resource than vegetal
biomass. In this way, the industrialization of agriculture can be interpreted as the
process of replacing dissipative structures of a biophysical nature, that belong to
agroecosystems and have been maintained by peasants through integrated manage-
ment, with man-​made dissipative structures or, to put it in economic terms, with
means of technical production obtained through markets and, to a lesser degree, from
State intervention.
However, in AM not only are energy and materials flows exchanged, but also
flows of information. These flows play a fundamental role: they have the cap-
acity to order and organize the physical, biological and social components of
agroecosystems. Indeed, agroecosystems process energy and materials to produce
biomass thanks to human labor. As we have seen, human work has a characteristic
that makes it pivotal: it incorporates information flows. The origin of these flows is
not farmers alone but also the household they are part of. Consequently, the main
fund element of agroecosystems is the “agrarian population”, composed of domestic
groups or households that are dedicated to this activity. There are three reasons for
this, based on the distinction between flows and funds. First, because the continu-
ation of the human work flow depends on the time investment in other tasks carried
out by the entire household. For example: time devoted to care, which are repro-
ductive tasks from the physiological point of view, or to social and educational activ-
ities, which from a social perspective would correspond to reproductive activities.
22

22 Political Agroecology

Second, because maintaining agroecosystems in good productive conditions requires

performing maintenance tasks that are not usually considered to be part of working
hours directly related to agricultural production or are effectively paid. And lastly,
because agricultural labor has usually been performed by farmers with the help of
the family, so agrarian work is essentially family work. As a result, we not only
considered the number of individuals engaged in agricultural work, but also their
families who are responsible for “producing” the agricultural workers and who can
engage in other paid and unpaid activities to achieve it. In fact, for peasant and small
and medium farmers, the family is above all the basis of their economy and the
objective of their productive strategies.
Human labor logically requires energy, basically endosomatic energy, to main-
tain and reproduce itself. In fact, this is the amount of energy that we used to cal-
culate the energy efficiency of each of the successive metabolic arrangements over
time. Nevertheless, as human societies have been gaining in complexity, cost of
reproduction has also increased to include all exosomatic energy incorporated in
that process (or its equivalent in monetary terms). As the metabolic profile of con-
temporary societies has increased the cultural consumption of energy and materials,
so has its monetary cost. Consequently, the concept of agrarian metabolism takes
into account not only the number of individuals engaged in agricultural work and
the time spent on it, but also their families or households and the paid or unpaid
work time that is required to sustain them. The maintenance of a constant flow of
human energy needed to manage agroecosystems depends on the reproduction of
these agricultural groups. Reproduction costs must be covered by the own farm
(self-​consumption), income from the sale of agricultural production or from money
obtained from the sale of labor power or other gainful activities. The fourth and last
fund element considered is technical means of production. Today it could be called
“Technical Capital” as referred to by Mario Giampietro et al. (2014). The mainten-
ance of this fund requires investment in energy and materials and, unlike the other
funds, its replacement occurs thanks to metabolic processes that take place outside
the agricultural sector itself.
We assumed that peasant or farmer decisions were directly influenced by the
ability to cover reproduction costs. They depend, in fact, ever more on the monetary
remuneration that they receive in exchange for the sale of their products. Therefore,
monetary flows constitute a suitable proxy for synthesized information flows.
Information flows are defined as follow: flows originating in the agrarian population
fund element, in the form of work and incorporated management decisions; and mon-
etary flows stemming from the agroecosystem’s social environment and ending up
in this information fund in the form of money obtained in exchange for production.
Money, expressed in relative prices, has transmitted information that has enabled to
largely explain –​especially in societies with monetized exchanges –​the behavior
of social agents, in our case that of farmers and peasants. This does not mean that
markets, as they are organized today, have determined farmers’ behaviors based on
relative prices. Markets were not always the main or only way to exchange goods
and services. Therefore, their dynamics only explain productive decisions in contexts
of commodified economies, where relative prices are the most relevant indicator or
source of information. We are aware of other non-​monetary information flows that
23

Theoretical Foundations 23

also have a bearing on farmers’ decisions, but momentary flows are essential, espe-
cially for market or capitalist societies.

1.11 THE ORGANIZATION AND DYNAMICS OF AGRARIAN

METABOLISM
Moreover, the relative prices of inputs and agricultural products determine the mon-
etary income received by farmers, and therefore, they determine the reproduction
possibilities of agroecosystems’ fund elements. These prices do not result, as clas-
sical and neoclassical economic theory claims, from the intersection between supply
and demand, nor are they merely an expression of the exchange value of such com-
modities, as maintained by Marxist theory. They also stem from regulations and
norms that generate a favorable environment to maintain a given configuration of
social relations and power relations. For example, in capitalist societies, markets
operate within an institutional framework designed to reproduce the socioeco-
logical conditions necessary to maintain them as a system of domination. The trade-​
off between metabolic entropy and social entropy in agriculture has relied on this
institutional framework, converting industrialized agroecosystems into dissipative
structures with high entropy and low sustainability levels.
The market itself and private property constitute two of its major pillars, but they
are not the only ones. They form an institutional conglomerate that directs energy
and material flows within the agroecosystems and explains the degree of access to
their fund elements. This institutional conglomerate has been described as a food/​ali-
mentary regime. Regime comes from the Latin word “regimen” and refers to the set
of rules that govern or regulate an activity or a thing. Such rules, in turn, reflect spe-
cific power relations that aspire to becoming permanent by means of these rules, to
endure over time, benefiting those in a position of power or domination. When those
norms are maintained over time, we can speak of regime: “The international relations
literature also uses the term ‘regime’ to capture the formation of self-​governing
networks which enable partners to meet shared concerns. International regimes are
systems of norms and roles agreed upon by states to govern their behavior in specific
political contexts or issue areas. Regimes are formed to provide regulation and order
without resort to the over-​arching authority of a supranational government […] The
analysis of international regimes has largely concentrated on the coming together of
state actors, although the involvement of non-​state actors is not entirely neglected”
(Stoker, 1998, 23).
This term has been applied to food systems to highlight the stable nature of insti-
tutional arrangements and the power relations that sustain them, especially since the
late nineteenth century with the consolidation of nation states and the arrival of the
First Globalization (Friedmann, 1987; McMichael, 2009). Indeed, Harriet Friedmann
defined the food regime as a “rule-​governed structure of production and consump-
tion of food on a world scale” (Friedmann, 1993, 30–​31). It is not necessary for
these rules to be completely explicit, the regime is based on increasingly sweeping
international agreements and national legislations that enshrine the empire of private
property and the market: “The food regime, therefore, was partly about international
relations of food, and partly about the world food economy. Regulation of the food
24

24 Political Agroecology

regime both underpinned and reflected changing balances of power among states,
organized national lobbies, classes –​farmers, workers, peasants –​and capital. The
implicit rules evolved through practical experiences and negotiations among states,
ministries, corporations, farm lobbies, consumer lobbies and others, in response to
immediate problems of production, distribution and trade” (Friedmann, 1993, 31).
As we will see in the chapter that follows, food regulation has been the expression of
governments’ economic policies, of the interests of agricultural input companies and
of the progressive hegemony of large retail chains and agribusiness.
Friedmann’s conception of the food regime is open, far removed from a strict
expression of dominant interests: it is dynamic and changing, determined not only
by relentless power relations between States and corporations, but also by social
movements fighting against that imposed order. The objective is to maintain the
essence of the regime while adapting to changing scenarios. The food regime there-
fore reflects power relations, but it also constitutes a stable way of organizing the
flows of energy, materials, and information; it plays a key role in the functioning
of social metabolism at a national and international level, given that food is a key
element in the trade-​off between biophysical and social entropy. The concept of
food regime thus arose to designate the series of norms regulating the world’s food
system. As explained above, it can, however, be applied nationally and even locally.
The concept is applicable at almost any territorial scale.

1.12 AGROECOLOGICAL TRANSITION AND FOOD

REGIME CHANGE
As we will see later, an agroecological change is not possible without a change in the
institutional framework. A change of the dominant food regime is the main objective
of Political Agroecology. In the social sciences, theories that explain long-​term
changes in human societies using the concept of transition have become increas-
ingly relevant (Bergh & Bruinsma, 2008; Lachman, 2013). A theoretical proposal
that analyzes transition toward sustainability from a metabolic perspective has also
been developed, given that the ecological crisis pushes toward a better understanding
of historical change, in this case, toward sustainability. According to this approach,
socioecological transitions constitute processes of structural change affecting the
configuration of energy, material, and information flows that societies exchange with
their environment (Fischer-​Kowalski & Rotmans, 2009; Fischer-​Kowalski, 2011).
Following this approach, the food regime transition could be understood as a process
of shifting from one institutional framework to a qualitatively different one. Such a
transition implies major changes, and not simple readjustments or improvements. It
means attaining a new, qualitatively different food regime. In this sense, we agree
with Fischer-​Kowalski and Haberl (2007, 7) when they state that the socioecological
transition is the product of a deliberative change. This claim is supported by the tran-
sition to a more sustainable world: it seems logical, but it is far from being inevitable.
We are adopting an instrumental and contingent approach to the food regime,
thus lessening its normative load, not only because it is an ex post facto created
tool for understanding historical processes, but also because socioecological change
is a constitutive property of social systems. From our perspective, the process of
25

Theoretical Foundations 25

socioecological change is continuous and leads to emergent food system structures

that will not remain equal until a new period of transition begins. Human societies
evolve side by side with nature; however, by its own factors and mechanisms. This
recognition of the essential unity of the evolutionary process implies conceiving
social change as that in which the new emerges from the old, innovation elaborates
on preexisting material. It was Edgar Morin (2010) who suggested that the neces-
sary change toward a more sustainable world is a process of metamorphosis, a
new qualitatively different socioecological order that must be built, however, on
the existing foundations (see Chapter 5). By doing so, it distances itself from the
eternal contradiction between reform and revolution, between evolution and rup-
ture. Metamorphosis is thus an appropriate metaphor to understand the enormous
complexity of socioecological change. Social systems do not evolve linearly but in
unexpected, random directions, among other things, because they are entropically
undetermined. Ultimately, we understand the food regime transition as the temporal
process in which the most relevant changes take place leading to one of the isomorphic
models of the food system we are considering. In that sense, the concepts of socio-
ecological change and metamorphosis complement each other well, allowing transi-
tion to be understood as a process by which the food regime changes, for example,
from an industrial to a sustainable mode. Metamorphosis admits variably lasting
hybrid forms in which the food regime is neither entirely industrial nor organic.
The analysis of the driving forces of transition is also a complex task. It consists
of exploring how the food regime’s material processes (appropriation, circula-
tion, transformation, consumption, and excretion) function mediated by a combin-
ation of intangible factors (knowledge, technology, institutions, etc.), and how that
function changes as a consequence of the differential role played by the system’s
components through time. This process is directly linked to the complex, intricate,
and reciprocal interrelations proper to the dynamics of ecosystems and landscapes
being appropriated, or in which wastes are disposed of. Lachman (2013, 274) was
right to criticize this approach to the socioecological transition: he claimed that the
sociometabolic transition proposal constitutes an exceedingly abstract system (social
metabolism) from which social actors are excluded. Factors such as beliefs as well as
political, economic, or cultural interests are not accounted for, which makes it unlikely
that this general and abstract model can guide its users in the design of policies to
advance the transition. Our proposal considers that social actors are unquestionable
protagonists. With the latter assumption in mind, collective action –​collective action
by agroecological movements in particular –​is assigned a major role in the process
of food regime transition. In previous epigraphs, we approached their negentropic
capacity to promote changes that would make the complete metamorphosis of the
food regime possible. In the following chapters, we attempt to diagnose the workings
of the current food regime. We will also develop strategies and instruments of action
that help agroecological movements to change the regime.
26
27

References
Adams, R.N. 1975. Energy and Structure. A Theory of Social Power. Austin: University of
Texas Press.
Adams, R.N. 1988. The Eight Day: Social Evolution as the Self-​Organization of Energy.
Austin: University of Texas Press.
Adams R.N. 2001. El octavo día. Mexico: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana.
AEAT. 2014. Datacomex: Estadísticas del comercio exterior español. Agencia Española de
Administración Tributaria. http://​datacomex.comercio.es
Aganbem, G. 2006. El reino y la Gloria. Por una genealogía teológica de la economía y del
gobierno. Valencia: Editorial Pretextos.
Agarwal, B. 2010. Gender and Green Governance: The Political Economy of Women’s
Presence Within and Beyond Community Forestry. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Agnoletti, M. (ed.). 2006. The Conservation of Cultural Landscapes. Wallingford/​Cambridge
MA: CAB International.
Aguilar, L. 2003. Estudio introductorio. In L.F. Aguilar (ed.). Problemas políticos y Agenda de
Gobierno. Mexico: Grupo Editorial Miguel Angel Porrua.
Aguilar, L. 2007. El aporte de la Política Pública y de la Nueva Gestión Pública a la gobernanza
Revista del CLAD. Reforma y Democracia, 39, 1–​15.
Ajates Gonzalez, R., Thomas, J., & Chang, M. 2018. Translating agroecology into policy: the
case of France and the United Kingdom. Sustainability, 10, 2930; doi:10.3390/​
su10082930.
Alcott, B. 2005. Jevons paradox. Ecological Economics, 54, 9–​21.
Alesina, A., Algan, Y., Cahuc, P., & Giuliano, P. 2015. Family values and the regulation of
labor. Journal of the European Economic Association, 13, 599–​630.
Allen, R.C. 2004. Revolución en los campos. La reinterpretación de la revolución agrícola
inglesa. Zaragoza: SEHA/​Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza.
Allen, P., & Kovach, M. 2000. The capitalist composition of organic farming: the potential of
markets in fulfilling the promise of organic farming. Agriculture and Human Values,
17, 221–​232.
Altieri, M. & Toledo, V. 2011. The agroecological revolution in Latin America. Rescuing
nature, ensuring food sovereignity and empowering peasant. Journal of Pesant Studies,
38, 587–​612.
Altieri, M.A., & Nicholls, C.I. 2007. Biodiversidad y manejo de plagas en agro sistemas.
Barcelona: Icaria.
Altieri, M., Nicholls, C.I., & Funes-​Monzote, F. 2012. The scaling up of Agroecology: spreading
the hope for food sovereignty and resiliency: A contribution to discussions at Rio+20
on issues at the interface of hunger, agriculture, environment and social justice. Socla.
https://​foodfirst.org/​wp-​content/​uploads/​2014/​06/​JA11-​The-​Scaling-​Up-​of-​Agroecology-​
Altieri.pdf.
Amore, M.D., & Epure, M. 2018. Family ownership and trust during a financial crisis (May
15, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://​ssrn.com/​abstract=2968889 or http://​dx.doi.org/​
10.2139/​ssrn.2968889
Anisi, D. 1992. Mercado, valores: una reflexión económica sobre el poder. Madrid: Alianza
Editorial.
Arrow, K.J. 1974. Elección social y valores individuales. Ministerio de Economía y
Hacienda.

27
28

28 References

Axelrod, R. 2004. La complejidad de la cooperación: modelos de cooperación y colaboración

basados en los agentes, 2ª edición. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Axelrod, R. 2006. The Evolution of Cooperation, rev. ed. New York: Perseus Books.
Bailey, K.D. 1990. Theory of Social Entropy. New York: SUNY Press.
Bailey, K.D. 1997a. The autopoiesis of social systems: assessing Lymahnn’s Theory of
selfreference. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 14, 83–​100.
Bailey, K.D. 1997b. System entropy analysis. Kybernetes, 26, 674–​688.
Bailey, K.D. 2006a. Living systems theory and social entropy theory. Systems Research and
Behavioral Science, 23, 291–​300.
Bailey, K.D. 2006b. Sociocybernetics and social entropy theory. Kybernetes, 35, 375–​384.
Barkin, D., Batt, R., & DeWalt, B.R. 1991. Alimentos versus Forrajes: la sustitución entre
granos a escala mundial. Madrid: Siglo XXI Editores.
Barrera-Bassolls, N. & Toledo, V.M. 2008. La memoria biocultural. La importancia ecológica
de las sabidurías tradicionales. Barcelona: Icaria.
Barret, S., & Fudge, C. 1981. Policy and Action: Essays on the Implementation of Public
Policy. London and New York: Methuen.
Barruti, S. 2013. Mal Comidos: cómo la industria alimentaria argentina nos está matando.
Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: Planeta.
Barruti, S. 2018. Mala Leche: el supermercado como emboscada –​Por qué la comida
ultraprocesada nos enferma desde chicos. Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: Planeta.
Barton, R.A., & Harvey, P.C. 2000. Mosaic evolution of brain structure in mammals. Nature,
405(6790), 1055–​1058.
Beck, U. 1998. La sociedad del riesgo: hacia una nueva modernidad. Barcelona: Paidós.
Bénabou, R., & Tirole, J. 2003. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The Review of Economic
Studies, 70, 489–​520.
Benyus, J.M. 1997. Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. New York: William Morrow,
USA.
Bergh, J.C. van der, & Bruinsma, F.R. (eds.). 2008. Managing the Transition to Renewable
Energy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Bermudez Gómez, C.A. 2011. Mercosur y Unasur: una mirada a la integración regional a
comienzo del siglo XXI. Análisis Político, 72, 115–​131.
Bernstein, H. 1977. Notes on capital and peasantry. Review of African Political Economy.
Vol. 10:60–​73.
Bernstein, H. 1986. Capitalism and petty commodity production. Social Analysis: Journal of
Social and Cultural Practice, 20, 11–​28.
Bernstein, H. 2001. The peasantry in global capitalism. In L. Panitch & C. Leys (eds.). Socialist
Register, Working Classes, Global Realities. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Bernstein, H. 2010. Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change, Agrarian Change and Peasant
Studies Series. Halifax, N.S., Sterling, VA: Fernwood Publishers, Kumarian Press.
Bernstein, H. 2014. Food sovereignty via the ‘peasant way’: a sceptical view. The Journal of
Peasant Studies, 41, 1031–​1063.
Bernstein, H., Friedmann, H., van der Ploeg, J.D., Shanin, T., & White, B. 2018. Forum: Fifty
years of debate on peasantries, 1966–​2016. Journal of Peasant Studies, 45, 689–​714.
Bicchieri, C. 2016. Norms in the Wild. How to Diagnose, Measure, and Change Social Norms.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Biovision. 2018. Beacons of Hope: Path to a more sustainable food system. www.biovision.ch/​
en/​news/​beacons-​of-​hope-​path-​to-​a-​more-​sustainable-​food-​system/​ (accessed January
4, 2019).
Blaikie, P. 2008. Epilogue: Towards a future for political ecology that works. Geoforum, 29,
765–​772.
29

References 29

Blaikie, P. & Brookfield H. 1987. Land Degradation and Society. London: Methuen.
Böcker, T. & Finger, R. 2016. European pesticide tax schemes in comparison: an analysis of
experiences and developments. Sustainability, 8, 378.
Boltansky, L. & Chiapello, E. 2002. El nuevo espíritu del capitalism [The New Spirit of
Capitalism]. Madrid: Editorial Akal.
Boltzmann, L. 1964. [1896]. Lectures on Gas Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Boulding, K.E. 1978. Ecodynamics: A New Theory of Societal Evolution. London: Sage
Publications.
Boulding, K.E. 1994 [1992]. Kenneth E. Boulding. De la química a la economía y más allá.
In M. Szenberg (ed. 1994). Grandes economistas de hoy. Madrid, Debate, pp. 79–​95.
Bourdieu, P. 1979. La distinction. Critique sociale du jugement. Paris: Les Éditions de Minui.
Bourdieu, P. 1991. El sentido práctico. Madrid: Editorial Taurus.
Bourdieu, P. 2004. El baile de los solteros: la crisis de la sociedad campesina en el Bearne.
Barcelona: Editoral Anagrama.
Bowen, S. 2010. Embedding local places in global spaces: geographical indications as a terri-
torial development strategy. Rural Sociology, 75, 209–​243.
Bowen, S., & De Master, K. 2011. New rural livelihoods or museums of production? Quality
food initiatives in practice. Journal of Rural Studies, 27, 73–​82.
Braudel, F. 1995. Civilização material, economia e capitalismo séculos xv-​xviii. São Paulo:
Martins Fontes.
Brenner, R. 2009. La economía de la turbulencia global. Madrid: Akal.
Brescia, S. (org.). 2017. Fertile Ground; Scaling Agroecology from the Ground Up.
Oakland: Food First Books.
Bringenzu, S. 2015. Possible target corridor for sustainable use of global material. Resources,
41, 25–​54.
Bronley, D.W. 2016. Sufficient Reason: Volitional Pragmatism and the Meaning of Economic
Institutions. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bruckner M, Giljum S, Lutz C, Wiebe KS. 2012. Materials embodied in international trade-
global material extraction and consumption between 1995 and 2005. Glob. Environ.
Change 22(3):568–76.
Brunori, G., Rossi, A., & Guidi, F. 2012. On the new social relations around and beyond food.
Analysing consumers’ role and action in Gruppi Di Acquisto Solidale (solidarity pur-
chasing groups). Sociologia Ruralis, 52, 1–​30. doi:10.1111/​j.1467-​9523.2011.00552.x.
Bruton, H.J. 1998. A reconsideration of import substitution. Journal of Economic Literature,
36, 903–​936.
Buckwell, A., Nordang Uhre, A., Williams, A., Jana Poláková, J., Blum, W.E., Schiefer, J., Lair,
G.J., Heissenhuber, A., Schiel, P., Krämer, C., et al. 2015. The Sustainable Intensification of
European Agriculture. Brussels: RISE Foundation. Available online: www.risefoundation.eu/​
images/​files/​2014/​2014_​SI_​Brief.pdf (accessed October 30, 2015).
Buggle, J., & Durante, R. 2017. Climate Risk, Cooperation, and the Co-​Evolution of Culture
and Institutions. London: Centre for Economic Policy Research.
Bui, S., Cardona, A., Lamine, C., & Cerf, M. 2016. Sustainability transitions: insights on
processes of niche–​regime interaction and regime reconfiguration in agri-​food systems.
Journal of Rural Studies, 48, 92–​103.
Bulatkin, G.A. 2012. Analysis of energy flows in agro-​ecosystems. Herald of the Russian
Academy of Sciences, 82, 326–​334.
Bunge, M. 2015. Emergencia y convergencia. Cham: Springer Nature.
Cadieux, K.V., Carpenter, S., Blumberg, R., Liebman, A., & Upadhyay, B. 2019. Reparation
ecologies: regimes of repair in populist agroecology. Annals of the American Association
of Geographers. Available at: http://​works.bepress.com/​kvalentine-​cadieux/​34/​
30

30 References

Calva, J.L. 1988. Los Campesinos ante el devenir. Mexico: Siglo XXI Editores.
Campbell, B.M., Thornton, P., Zougmore, R., van Asten, P., & Lipper, L. 2014. Sustainable
intensification: what is its role in climate smart agriculture? Current Opinion in
Environmental Sustainability, 8, 39–​43.
Canning, P., Charles, A., Huang, S., Polenske, K., & Waters, A. 2010. Energy use in the
U.S. Food System. Economic Research Report 94. Washington, DC: United States
Department of Agriculture.
CAP (Consejería de Agricultura y Pesca de la Junta de Andalucía). 2007. II Plan andaluz de
Agricultura Ecológica. Sevilla: Consejería de Agricultura y Pesca.
CAP (Consejería de Agricultura y Pesca de la Junta de Andalucía). 2012. Boletín de compostaje
para la producción ecológica. Primer trimestres 2012. www.juntadeandalucia.es
(accessed March 27, 2014).
Caporal, F.R. 2014. Extensão Rural como Política Pública: a difícil tarefa de avaliar. In
Sambuichi, R.H.R., Silva, A.P.M., Oliveira, M.A.C., & Savian, M. (orgs.) Políticas
Agroambientais e Sustentabilidade: desafios, oportunidades e lições aprendidas.
Brasília: IPEA, pp. 19–​47.
Carneiro, F.F, Rigotto, R.M., Augusto, L.G.S., Friedrich, K. & Búrigo, A.C. (orgs.). 2015.
Dossié Abrasco: um alerta sobre os impactos dos agrotóxicos na saúde. Rio de Janeiro:
EPSJV; São Paulo: Expressão Popular.
Centola, D., Becker, J., Brackbiill, D., & Baronchelli, A. 2018. Experimental evidence for
tipping points in social convent. Science, 360(6393), 1116–​1119.
CEPAL, FAO, IICA. 2012. Perspectivas de la agricultura y del desarrollo rural en las
Américas: una Mirada hacia América Latina y el Caribe. Santiago, Chile: FAO.
Charão Marques, F., Ploeg, J. D. van der, Kessler Dal Soglio, F., Barbier, M., & Elzen, B. 2012.
New identities, new commitments: something is lacking between niche and regime. In
System Innovations, Knowledge Regimes, and Design Practices towards Transitions for
Sustainable Agriculture. Paris: INRA –​Science for Action and Development, pp. 23–​46.
Chayanov, A. 1966a. On the theory of non-​capitalist economic system. In D. Thorner, B.H.
Kerblay, & R.E.F. Smith (orgs.), A.V. Chayanov on the Theory of Peasant Economy.
Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.
Chayanov, A 1966b. The theory of peasant economy. In D. Thorner, B.H. Kerblay, & R.E.F.
Smith (orgs.), A.V. Chayanov on the Theory of Peasant Economy. Madison: The
University of Wisconsin Press.
Chevassus-​ au-​
Louis, B. & Griffon, M. 2008. La Nouvelle Modernité: Une Agriculture
Productive à Haute Valeur Ecologique. Available online: http://​clubdemeter.com/​pdf/​
ledemeter/​2008/​la_​nouvelle_​modernite_​une_​agriculture_​productive_​a_​haute_​valeur_​
ecologique.pdf (accessed September 1, 2016).
Cleveland, C., 1995. The direct and indirect use of fossil fuels and electricity in USA agricul-
ture, 1910–​1990. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 55, 111–​121.
Clune, S., Crossin, E. & Verghese, K. 2017. Systematic review of greenhouse gas emissions
for different fresh food categories. Journal of Cleaner Products, 140, 766–​783.
Clunies-​Ross, T., & Hildyard, N. 2013. The Politics of Industrial Agriculture. London:
Routledge.
Coase, R.H. 1994. La empresa, el mercado y la ley. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.
Colomer, J.M. 2009. Ciencia de la política: Una introducción. Barcelona: Editorial Ariel.
CONAB-​ Companhia Nacional de Abastecimento. 2018. Compêndio de Estudos Conab.
Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos (PAA: Resultado das ações da CONAB em 2017).
Brasília: CONAB.
Costanza, R., de Groot, R., Sutton, P.C., van der Ploeg, S., Anderson, S., Kubiszewski, I.,
Farber, S., & Turner, R.K. 2014. Changes in the global value of ecosystem services.
Global Environmental Change, 26, 152–​158.
31

References 31

Costanza, R., Graumlich, L., Steffen, W., Crumley, C., Dearing J., Hibbard, K., Leemans, R.,
Redman, C., & Schimel, D. 2007. Sustainability or collapse: what can we learn from
integrating the history of humans and the rest of nature? AMBIO: A Journal of the
Human Environment, 36, 522–​527.
Costanza, R., Graumlich, L.J. & Steffen, W. 2005. Sustainability or Collapse? An Integrated
History and Future of People on Earth. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
CSM (Food Security and Nutrition Civil Society Mechanism). 2018. Connecting smallholdings
to markets; an analytical guide. Rome: CSM.
Cuesta, P. & Gutiérrez, P. 2010. El equipamiento comercial de los centros comerciales en
España. Distribución y Consumo, 110 (Marzo–​Abril), 121.
Cunfer, G. & Krausmann, F. 2009. Sustaining soil fertility: agricultural practice in the Old and
New Worlds. Global Environment, 4, 9–​43.
Cussó, X., Garrabou, R., Olarieta, J.R., & Tello, E. 2006. Balances energéticos y usos del suelo
en la agricultura catalana: una comparación entre mediados del siglo XIX y finales del
siglo XX. Historia Agraria, 40, 471–​500.
Daly, H. 1973. Toward A Steady Estate Econmy. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman.
Darnhofer, I.S. 2014. Contributing to a transition to sustainability of agri-​food systems:
potentials and pitfalls for organic farming. In S. Bellon, & S. Penvern (eds.). Organic
Farming, Prototype for Sustainable Agricultures. Dordrecht: Springer Science, pp.
439–​452.
Darnhofer, I. 2015. Socio-​technical transitions in farming. Key concepts. In L.A. Sutherland,
I. Darnhofer, G. Wilson, & L. Zagata (eds.). Transition Pathways towards Sustainability
in Agriculture. Case studies from Europe. Wallingford: CABI.
Darnhofer, I., Lindenthal, T., Bartel-​Kratochvil, R., & Zollistsch, W. 2010. Conven­
tionalisation of organic farming practices: from structural criteria towards an
assessment based on organic principles. A review. Agronomy for Sustainable
Development, 30, 67–​81.
De Schutter, O. 2011. Agroecology and the Right to Food. ONU (report presented at the 16th
Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council).
Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. 1995. Mil platôs; capitalismo e esquizofrenia (V1). São Paulo:
Editora 34.
Dennet, D. 1996. Contenido y conciencia. Barcelona: Gedisa.
Diamond, J. 2004. Colapsos. Madrid: Editorial Debate.
Dittrich, M. & Bringezu, S. 2010. The physical dimension of international trade. Part 1: Direct
global flows between 1962 and 2005. Ecological Economics, 69, 1838–​1847.
Dittrich, M., Bringezu, S., & Schütz, H. 2011. The physical dimension of international trade,
part 2: Indirect global resource flows between 1962 and 2005. Ecological Economics,
79, 32–​43.
Dixon, J., Gulliver, A., & Gibbon, D. 2001. Sistemas de producción agropecuaria y pobreza.
Cómo mejorar los medios de subsistencia de los pequeños agricultores en un mundo
cambiante. Roma: FAO.
Domenech, A. 1998. Ocho desiderata metodológicos de las teorías sociales normativas.
Isegoria, 18, 115–​141.
Dörr, F. 2018. Food regimes, corporate concentration and its implications for decent
work. In C. Scherrer, & S. Verma (eds.). Decent Work Deficits in Southern
Agriculture: Measurements, Drivers and Strategies. Labor and Globalization Volume
11. Kassel: Rainer Hampp Verlag, 178–​208.
Duncan, J. 2015. Global Food Security Governance: Civil Society Participation in Committee
on World Food Security. London: EarthScan Routledge.
Echevarría, C. 1998. A three-​factor agricultural production function: the case of Canada.
International Economics Journal, 2, 63–​76.
32

32 References

Edwards-​Jones, G., Milà I Canals, Ll., Hounsome, N., Truninger, M., Koerber, G., Hounsome,
B., Cross, P., York, E.H., Hospido, A., Plassmann, K., et al. 2008. Testing the assertion
that ‘local food is best’: the challenges of an evidence-​based approach. Trends in Food
Science & Technology, 19, 265–​274.
Egea-​Fernández, J.M., & Egea-Sánchez, J.M. 2012. Canales cortos de comercialización,
soberanía alimentaria y conservación de la agrobiodiversidad. In Actas del X Congreso
de Agricultura Ecológica. Albacete: SEAE.
Eisenmenger, N., Ramos, J., & Schandl, H. 2007. Transition in a contemporary con-
text: patterns of development in a globalizing world. In M. Fisher-​Kowalski & H.
Haberl (eds.). Socioecological Transitions and Global Change. Trajectories of Social
Metabolism and Land Use. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 179–​222.
Elster, J. 2007. Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Elzen, B., Van Mierlo, B., & Leeuwis, C. 2012. Anchoring of innovations: assessing Dutch
efforts to harvest energy from glasshouses. Environmental Innovation and Societal
Transitions, 5, 1–​18.
Engel, G.S., Calhoun, T.R., Read, E.L., Ahn, T.-​K., Mančal, T., Cheng, Y.-​C., Blankenship, R.,
& Fleming, G.R. 2007. Evidence for wavelike energy transfer through quantum coher-
ence in photosynthetic systems. Nature, 446(7137), 782–​786.
EU-​DG AGRI (European Commission. Directorate-​ General For Agriculture And Rural
Development). 2010. An Analysis of the EU Organic Sector. Brussels: European
Commission.
FAO. 1995. Agricultural trade. Entering a new era? www.fao.org/​es/​esa/​es/​pubs_​sofa.htm.
FAO. 2000. El estado de la inseguridad alimentaria en el mundo. Rome: FAO.
FAO. 2004. FAO Statistical Yearbook 2004. Rome: FAO.
FAO. 2006. Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options. November 29.
www.fao.org/​3/​aa0701e.pdf
FAO. 2007. SOFA (The State of Food and Agricultura [El estado mundial de la agricultura y
la alimentación]. Rome: FAO.
FAO. 2008. Current World Fertilizar Trenes and Outlook to 2011/​12. Rome: FAO.
FAO. 2009. Global Agriculture towards 2050. Report from the High-​Level Expert Forum
‘How to Feed the World 2050’. Available online: www.fao.org/​fileadmin/​templates/​
wsfs/​docs/​Issues_​papers/​HLEF2050_​Global_​Agriculture.pdf (accessed May
4, 2014).
FAO. 2011. State of Land and Water. Rome: FAO.
FAO. 2012a. Dinámicas del Mercado de tierra en América Latina y el Caribe: concentración
y extranjerización. Santiago, Chile: FAO.
FAO. 2012b. Directrices sobre la Prevención y Manejo de la Resistencia a los Plaguicidas.
Rome: FAO.
FAO. 2016. El estado mundial de la agricultura y la alimentación. Rome: FAO.
FAO. 2018. Scaling up Agroecology Initiative: Transforming Food and Agricultural Systems
in Support of the SDGs. Rome: FAO.
Fath, B.D., Jørgensen, S.E., Patten, B.C., & Străskraba, M. 2004. Ecosystem growth and
development. Biosystems, 77, 213–​228.
Federici, S. 2018. El patriarcado del salario. Critica feminista al marxismo. Madrid: Traficantes
de sueños.
FEHR. 2005. Diagnóstico del sector de bares, restaurantes y cafeterías. Madrid: Federación
Española de Hostelería.
Ferrajoli, L. 2010. Democracia y garantismo. Valencia: Trotta.
33

References 33

Ferreira, T.L. 2016. Sistematização dos Impactos das Chamadas 46/​2012 e 81/​2013 (MCTI,
MAPA, MEC, MDA. Apresentação em PDF. BLOG: frcaporal.blogspot.com.br
(accessed July 16, 2018).
Fischer-​Kowalski, M. 2011. Analyzing sustainability transitions as a shift between socio-​
metabolic regimes. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 1, 152–​159.
Fischer-​Kowalski, M., & Amann, C. 2001. Beyond IPATS and Kuznets curves: globalization
as a vital factor in analysing the environmental impact of socioeconomic metabolism.
Population and Environment 23, 7–​47.
Fischer-​Kowalski, M., & Haberl, H. (eds.). 2007. Socioecological Transitions and Global
Change. Trajectories of Social Metabolism and Land Use. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Fischer-​Kowalski, M., & Rotmans, J. 2009. Conceptualizing, observing, and influencing
social–​ecological transitions. Ecology and Society, 14(2).
Flannery, K., & Marcus J 2012. The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors
Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Foley, J.A., DeFries, R., Asner, G. P., Barford, C., Bonan, G., Carpenter, S. R., Chapin, F. S.,
Coe, M. T., Daily, G. C., Gibbs, H. K., et al. 2005. Global consequences of land use.
Science, 309, 570–​574.
Forsyth, T. 2008. Political ecology and the epistemology of social justice. Geoforum, 39,
756–​764
Foucault, M. 1991. La gubernamentalidad. In R. Castel, J. Donzelot, M. Foucault, J. P. de
Gaudamar, Cl. Grignon, & F. Muel (eds.). Espacios de poder. Barcelona: Ediciones de
La Piqueta.
Francis, C.A., Lieblein, G., Gliessman, S., Breland, T.A., Creamer, N., Harwood, R.,
Salomonsson, L., Heleniu, J., Rickel, D., Salvador, R., et al. 2003. Agroecology: the
ecology of food systems. Journal of Sustainable Agriculture, 22(3), 99–​118.
Fréguin-​Gresh, S. 2017. Agroecología y Agricultura Orgánica en Nicaragua. Génesis,
institucionalización y desafíos, en PP-​AL (Red Políticas Públicas en América Latina y
el Caribe). Políticas Públicas a favor de la Agroecología en América Latina y el Caribe.
Brasilia: PP-​AL, pp. 174–​196.
Friedmann, H. 1987. The family farm and the international food regimes. In T. Shanin (ed.).
Peasants and Peasant Societies, 2nd ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, pp. 247–​58.
Friedmann, H. 1993. The political economy of food: a global crisis. New Left Review, 197,
29–​57, 30–​31.
Friedmann, H. 2005. From colonialism to green capitalism: social movements and emer-
gence of food regimes. In F.H. Buttel, & P. McMichael (eds.). New Directions in the
Sociology of Global Development, Research in Rural Sociology and Development.
Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 227–​264.
Friedmann, H. 2007. Scaling up: bringing public institutions and food service corporations
into the project for a local, sustainable food system in Ontario. Agriculture and Human
Values, 24, 389–​398.
Friedmann, H. 2016. Food Regime Analysis and Agrarian Questions. Widening the
Conversation. Available at: www.iss.nl/​fileadmin/​ASSETS/​iss/​Research_​and_​projects/​
Research_​networks/​ICAS/​57-​ICAS_​CP_​Friedman.pdf
Friedmann, H., & McMichael, P. 1989. Agriculture and the state sytem: the rise and decline of
national agricultures, 1870 to the present. Sociologia Ruralis, 292, 93–​117.
Galvão Freire, A. 2018. Women in Brazil build autonomy with agroecology. Farming
Matters, 341. Available at: https://​farmingmatters.org/​farming-​matters-​341-​1/​
women-​in-​brazil-​build-​autonomy-​with-​agroecology/​
34

34 References

Garbach, K., Milder, J.C., DeClerck, F.A., de Wit, M.A., Driscoll, L., & Gemmill-​Herren,
B. 2016. Examining multi-​functionality for crop yield and ecosystem services in
five systems of agroecological intensification. International Journal of Agricultural
Sustainability, 15, 11–​28.
García Trujillo, R., Tobar, E., & Gómez, F. 2009. Alimentos ecológicos para conusmo social
en Andalucía. In M. González de Molina (ed.). El desarrollo de la agricultura ecológica
en Andalucía 2004–​2007. Crónica de una experiencia agroecológica. Barcelona: Icaria,
pp. 195–​212.
Garnett, T., Appleby, M.C., Balmford, A., Bateman, I.J., Benton, T.G., Bloomer, P., Burlingame,
B., Dawkins, M., Dolan, L., Fraser, D., et al. 2013. Sustainable intensification in agri-
culture: premises and policies. Science, 341, 33–​34.
Garnett, T., & Godfray, C. 2012. Sustainable intensification in agriculture. navigating a course
through competing food system priorities; Food Climate Research Network and the
Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food, University of Oxford: Oxford,
UK, 2012. Available online: www.fcrn.org.uk/​sites/​default/​files/​SI_​report_​final.pdf
(accessed January 12, 2014).
Garrabou, R., & González de Molina, M. (eds.). 2010. La reposición de la fertilidad en los
sistemas agrarios tradicionales. Barcelona: Icaria.
Garrido, F. (Comp.). 1993. Introducción a la Ecología Política. Granada: Editorial Comares.
Garrido, F. 2009. El decrecimiento y la soberanía popular como procedimiento. http://​
congresos.um.es/​sefp/​sefp2009/​paper/​viewFile/​3631/​3611
Garrido, F. 2014. Topofilia, paisaje y sostenibilidad del territorio. Enrahonar. Quaderns de
Filosofia, 53, 63–​75.
Garrido, F. 2015. Crisis, democracia y decrecimiento. In G.M. Bester (ed.). Direito e ambiente
uma democracia sustentavel. Diálogos multidisciplinares entre Portugal y Brasil.
Curitiva: Instituto Memorias.
Garrido, F., González de Molina, M., Serrano, J.L., & Solana, J.L. (eds.). 2007. El paradigma
ecológico en las ciencias sociales. Barcelona: Icaria.
Garrido Peña, F. 1996. La ecología política como política del tiempo. Granada: Comares.
Garrido Peña, F. 2012. Ecología política y Agroecología: marcos cognitivos y diseño
institucional. Agroecología, 6, 21–​28.
Garvey, M. 2016. Novel Ecosystems, Familiar Injustices: The Promise of Justice-Oriented
Ecological Restoration. Darkmatter Journal: In the Ruins of Imperial Culture 13, 1–16.
Geels, F.W. 2002. Technological transitions as evolutionary reconfiguration processes: a
multi-​level perspective and a case-​study. Research Policy, 31, 1257–​1274.
George, S. 2010. Converging crises: reality, fear and hope. Globalizations, 7, 17–​ 22.
doi:10.1080/​14747731003593018.
Georgescu-​ Roegen, N. 1971. The Entropy Law and the Economic Process. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Gezon, L., & Paulson, S. 2005. Place, power, difference: multiscale research at the dawn of the
twenty first century. In S. Paulson, & L. Gezon (eds.). Political Ecology Across Spaces,
Scales and Social Groups (pp 1–​16). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Giampietro, M., Allen, T.F.H., & Mayumi, K. 2006. The epistemological predicament
associated with purposive quantitative analysis. Ecological Complexity, 3, 307–​327.
Giampietro, M., Aspinall, R.J., Ramos-​Martin, J., & Bukkens, S.G.F. (eds.). 2014. Resource
Accounting for Sustainability Assessment: The Nexus between Energy, Food, Water and
Land use. Abingdon: Routledge.
Giampietro, M., Mayumi, K., & Ramos-​Martin, J. 2008. Multi-​Scale Integrated Analysis
of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MUSIASEM). An Outline of Rationale and
Theory. Document de Treball. Departament d’Economia Aplicada.
35

References 35

Giddens, A. 1987. The Nation State and Violence. A Contemporary Critique of Historical
Materialism, Vol. 2. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Giddens, A. 2000. Mundo na era da globalização. Lisbon: Presença.
Gierlinger, S., & Krausmann, F. 2012. The physical economy of United States of America.
Journal of Industrial Ecology, 16, 365–​377.
Giljum, S., & Eisenmenger, N. 2003. North–​South Trade and the Distribution of Environmental
Goods and Burdens. SERI Studies 2.
Gintis, H. 2006. Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in
Economic Life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Gintis, H. 2009. The Bounds of Reason: Game Theory and the Unification of the Behavioral
Sciences. Englewood Cliffs: Princeton University Press.
Giraldo, O.F. 2018. Ecología política de la agricultura. Agroecología y posdesarrollo. San
Cristóbal de Las Casas: Del Colegio de la Frontera Sur.
Giraldo, O.F., & Rosset, P. 2016. La Agroecología en una encrucijada: entre la institucionalidad
y los movimientos sociales. Guaju, 2 14. doi:10.5380/​guaju.v2i1.48521.
Glansdorff, P., & Prigogine I. 1971. Thermodynamic Theory of Structure, Stability and
Fluctuations. New York: Wiley Interscience.
GLASOD (The Global Assessment of Human Induced Soil Degradation). 1991. UNEP.
Gliessman, S.R. 1998. Agroecology: Ecological Processes in Sustainable Agriculture.
Chelsea, MI: Ann Arbor Press.
Gliessman, S.R. 2011. Agroecology and food system change. Journal of Sustainable
Agriculture, 35, 345–​349.
Gliessman, S.R. 2013. Agroecología: plantando las raíces de la resistencia. Agroecología,
8, 19–​26.
Gliessman, S. 2014. Agroecology and social transformation. Agroecology and Sustainable
Food Systems, 38, 1125–​1126. doi:10.1080/​21683565.2014.951904.
Gliessman, S.R. (ed.). 2015. Agroecology: The Ecology of Sustainable Food Systems, 3rd ed.
New York: CRC Press.
Gliessman, S. 2018. Scaling-​out and scaling-​up agroecology. Agroecology and Sustainable
Food Systems, 42, 841–​842.
Gliessman, S.R., Rosado-​May, F.J., Guadarrama-​Zugasti, C., Jedlicka, J., Cohn, A., Méndez,
V.E., Cohen, R., Trujillo, L., Bacon, C.M., & Jaffe, R. 2007. Agroecología: promoviendo
una transición hacia la sostenibilidad. Ecosistemas, 16, 13–​23.
Gonsalves, J.F. 2001. Going to scale: what we have garnered from recent workshops. LEISA
Magazine. Available from: www.agriculturesnetwork.org/​library/​63894
González de Molina, M. 2001. Introducción. In M. González de Molina (ed.). La
Historia de Andalucía a debate (I. Campesinos y Jornaleros). Barcelona: Editorial
Anthropos.
González de Molina, M. (ed.). 2009. El desarrollo de la agricultura ecológica en Andalucía
2004–​2007. Crónica de una experiencia agroecológica. Barcelona: Icaria.
González de Molina, M. 2013. Agroecology and politics. How to get sustainability? About
the necessity for a political agroecology. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems,
37, 45–​59.
González de Molina, M., & Guzmán-​Casado, G. 2006. Tras los Pasos de la Insustentabilidad.
Agricultura y medio ambiente en perspectiva histórica. Barcelona: Icaria.
González de Molina, M., & Guzmán Casado, G.I. 2017. Agroecology and ecological intensifi-
cation. A discussion from a metabolic point of view. Sustainability, 9, 86.
González de Molina, M., Guzmán Casado, G., García Ruiz, R., Soto Fernández, D., Herrera
González de Molina, A., & Infante Amate, J. 2010. Claves del crecimiento agrario: la
reposición de la fertilidad en la agricultura andaluza de los siglos XVIII y XIX. In
36

36 References

R. Garrabou, & M. González de Molina (eds.). La reposición de la fertilidad en los

sistemas agrarios tradicionales. Barcelona: Editorial Icaria.
González de Molina, M., & Sevilla Guzmán, E. 1993a. Ecología, campesinado e historia: para
una reinterpretación del desarrollo del capitalismo en la agricultura. In E. Sevilla
Guzmán, & M. González de Molina (eds.). Ecología, campesinado e historia.
Madrid: Ediciones de la Piqueta, pp. 23–​130.
González de Molina, M., & Sevilla Guzmán, E. 1993b. Una propuesta de diálogo entre
socialismo y ecología: el neopopulismo ecológico. Ecología Política, 3, 121–​135.
González de Molina, M. & Sevilla Guzmán, E. 2001. Perspectivas socio-​ambientales de
la historia del movimiento campesino andaluz. in M. González de Molina (ed.). La
Historia de Andalucía a debate. I. Campesinos y jornaleros. Barcelona: Editorial
Anthropos, pp. 239–​287.
González de Molina, M, Soto Fernández, D., & Garrido Peña, F. 2016. Los conflictos
ambientales como conflictos sociales. Una mirada desde la ecología política y la
historia. Ecología Política, 50, 31–​38.
González de Molina, M., Soto Fernández, D., Guzmán Casado, G., Infante Amate, J., Aguilera
Fernández, E., Vila Traver, J., & García Ruiz, R. 2019. The Agrarian Metabolism of
Spanish Agriculture, 1900–​2008. The Mediterranean way towards industrialization.
Berlin: Springer.
González de Molina, M., Soto Fernández, D., Infante-​Amate, J., Aguilera Fernández, E., Vila
Traver, J, & Guzmán Casado, G. 2017. Decoupling food from land: the evolution of
Spanish agriculture from 1960 to 2010. Sustainability, 9, 2348.
González de Molina, M., & Toledo, V. 2011. Metabolismos, naturaleza e historia. Una teoría
de las transformaciones socioecológicas. Barcelona: Icaria.
González de Molina, M. & Toledo, V. 2014. The Social Metabolism: A Socioecological Theory
of Historical Change. Berlin: Springer.
Goodman, D. 2009. Place and space in alternative food networks: connecting production and
consumption. Working paper #21; Environment, Politics and Development Working
Paper Series. Department of Geography, King’s College London.
Goodman, N. 2013. Maneras de Hacer mundos. Madrid: Editorial Antonio Machado S.A.
Goody, J. 1986. La evolución de la familia y del matrimonio en Europa. Barcelona: Herder
Editorial.
Gould, F., Brown, Z.S., & Kuzma, J. 2018. Wicked evolution: can we address the sociobio-
logical dilemma of pesticide resistance? Science, 360(6390), 728–​732.
Gould, S.J., & Vrba, E.S. 1982. Exaptation –​a missing term in the science of form.
Paleobiology, 8, 4–​15.
Graeub, B.E., Jahi Chappell, M.J., Wittman, H., Ledermann, S., Bezner Kerr, B., &
Gemmill-​Herren, B. 2016. The state of family farms in the world. World Development,
87, 1–​15.
GRAIN. 2018. Emisiones imposibles. Cómo están calentando el planeta las grandes empresas
de carne y lácteos. GRAIN and Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (www.
grain.org/​es) (accessed November 28, 2018).
Greenpeace International. 2018. Less is More: Reducing Meat and Dairy for a Healthier Life
and Planet. London: Greenpeace.
Guaman, V. 2015. Democracia deliberativa en comunidades indígenas bajo los postulados
de Habermas. Academia. Available at www.academia.edu/​29580373/​Democracia_​
deliberativa_​en_​comunidades_​ind%C3%ADgenas_​bajo_​los_​postulados_​de_​Habermas.
Guthman, J. 2004. The trouble with ‘organic lite’ in California: a rejoinder to the
‘conventionalisation’ debate. Sociologia Ruralis, 44, 301–​316. doi:10.1111/​j.1467-​
9523.2004. 00277.x.
37

References 37

Guzmán, G.I., González de Molina, M., & Sevilla, E. (eds.). 2000. Introducción a la
Agroecología como desarrollo rural sostenible. Madrid: Mundi-​Prensa.
Guzmán Casado, G.I., & González de Molina, M. 2009. Preindustrial agriculture versus
organic agriculture. The land cost of sustainability. Land Use Policy, 26, 502–​510.
Guzmán Casado, G., & González de Molina, M. 2017. Energy in Agroecoystems. A Tool for
Assessing Sustainability. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Guzmán Casado, G.I., González de Molina, M., & Alonso Mielgo, A. 2011. The land cost of
agrarian sustainability. An assessment. Land Use Policy, 28, 825–​835.
Habermas, J. 2010. Faticidad y validez. Valencia: Trotta.
Hacyan, S. 2004. Física y metafísica del espacio y el tiempo: la filosofía en el laboratorio.
Mexico: FCE.
Hall, C.A.S. 2011. Introduction to special issue on new studies in EROI (energy return on
investment). Sustainability 3, 1773–​1777.
Hall, C.A.S., Balogh, S., & Murphy, D.J. 2009. What is the minimum EROI that a sustainable
society must have? Energies, 2, 25–​47.
Hardin, G. 1968. The Tragedy of the Commons. Science, 162(3859), 1243–​1248.
Hardisty, D.J., & Weber, E.U. 2009. Discounting future green: money vs the environment.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 138, 329–​340.
Hardt, M., & Negri, A. 2000. Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Harich, W. 1978. ¿Comunismo sin crecimiento? Babeuf y el club de Roma. Barcelona: Materiales.
Harper, A., Shattuck, A., & Holt-​Giménez, E. 2009. Food Policy Councils: Lessons Learned,
Food First. Institute for Food and Development Policy.
Harris, J. 1982. Rural Development: Theories of Peasant Economy and Agrarian Change.
London: Hutchinson University Library.
Hauser, O.P., Rand, D.G., Peysakhovich, A., & Nowak, M.A. 2014. Cooperating with the
future. Nature, 511(7508), 220–​223.
Hayek, F. 1944. The Road to Serfdom. Cambridge: Routledge Press, Sciences.
Hebinck, P., Ploeg, J.D. van der, & Schneider, S. (orgs.) 2015. Rural Development and the
Construction of New Markets. New York: Routledge.
Heinrich Böll Foundation, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Friends of the Earth Europe. 2017.
Agrifood Atlas. Facts and figures about the corporations that control what we eat.
Berlin: Heinrich Böll Foundation.
Hendrich, J. 2017. The Secret of Our Success How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution,
Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Hibbard, K.A., Crutzen, P.J., Lambin, E.F., Liverman, D.M., Mantua, N.J., McNeill, J.R.,
Messerli, B., & Steffen, W. 2007. Decadal-​scale interactions of humans and the envir-
onment. In R. Costanza, et al. (eds.) Sustainability or Collapse? An Integrated History
and Future of People on Earth. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 341–​377.
Hirst, E., 1974. Food-​related energy requirements. Science, 184(4133), 134–​138.
HLPE. 2012. Climate Change and Food Security; A Report by the High Level Panel of Experts
on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security. Rome: FAO.
Ho, M.-​W. 2013. Circular thermodynamics of organisms and sustainable systems. Systems,
1, 30–​49.
Ho, M.-​W., & Ulanowicz, R. 2005. Sustainable systems as organisms? BioSystems, 82, 39–​51.
Hobbes, T. 1984. Leviatán. Mexico D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Hobsbawn, E. 1994. Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–​1991. London:
Michael Joseph, pp. 288–​289.
Holloway, J. 2011. Agrietar el capitalismo: el hacer contra el trabajo. Buenos Aires:
Herramienta.
38

38 References

Holt-​Giménez, E. 2001. Scaling up sustainable agriculture. Lessons from the Campesino a

Campesino movement. LEISA magazine, October.
Holt-​Giménez, E. 2006. Campesino a Campesino: voices from Latin America’s farmer to
farmer movement for sustainable agriculture. Oakland, CA: Food First Books.
Holt-​Giménez, E., & Altieri, M.A. 2013. Agroecology, food sovereignty, and the new Green
Revolution. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 371, 90–​102.
Hoppe, R. 2010. The Governance of Problems: Puzzling, Powering, Participation. Bristol: The
Policy Press.
Horlings, L.G., & Marsden, T.K. 2011. Towards the real Green Revolution? Exploring
the conceptual dimensions of a new ecological modernisation of agriculture that
could ‘feed the world’. Global Environmental Change,21, 441–​ 452. doi:10.1016/​
j.gloenvcha.2011.01.004.
Hornborg, A. 2007. Footprints in the cotton fields: the industrial revolutionas time-​space
appropiation and environmental load displacement. In A. Hornborg, J.R. McNeill &
J. Martínez-​Alier (eds.). Rethinking Environmental History. World-​system History and
Global Environmental Change. Lanhan: Altamira Press, pp. 259–​272.
Hornborg, A. 2011. A Lucid Assessment of Uneven Development as a Result of the Unequal
Exchange of Time and Space. Lund University Centre of Excellence for Integration
of Social and Natural Dimensions of Sustainability (LUCID Assessment No. 1,
November 2011).
Hufty, M. 2008. Una propuesta para concretizar el concepto de gobernanza: el Marco Analítico
de la Gobernanza. In H.t Mazurek (ed.). Gobernabilidad y gobernanza en los territorios
de América Latina. La Paz: IFEA-​IRD.
IAASTD. 2009. Agriculture at a Crossroads. Global Report. International Assessment of
Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development.
INE (Instituto Nacional de Estadística). 2009. Censo agrario de 2009. www.ine.es (accessed
October 4, 2016).
Infante, J., & González de Molina, M. 2010. Agroecología y decrecimiento. Una alternativa
a la configuración actual del sistema agroalimentario español. Revista de Economía
Crítica, 10, 113–​137.
Infante-​Amate, J., & González de Molina, M. 2013. ‘Sustainable degrowth’ in agriculture and
food: an agro-​ecological perspective on Spain’s agri-​food system (year 2000). Journal
of Cleaner Production, 38, 27–​35.
Infante-​Amate, J., Aguilera, E., & González de Molina, M. 2014a. La gran transformación del
sector agroalimentario español. Un análisis desde la perspectiva energética 1960–​2010.
Sociedad Española de Historia Agraria. DT-​SEHA 1403. https://​ideas.repec.org/​p/​seh/​
wpaper/​1403.html (accessed April 2, 2015).
Infante-​Amate, J., Aguilera, E., & González de Molina, M. 2018a. Energy transition in agri-​
food systems. Structural change, drivers and policy implications (Spain, 1960–​2010).
Energy Policy, 122, 570–​579.
Infante-​Amate, J., Aguilera, E., Palmeri, F., Guzmán, G.I., Soto, D., García-​Ruiz, R., &
González de Molina, M. 2018b. Land embodied in Spain’s biomass trade and consump-
tion 1900–​2008. Historical changes, drivers and impacts. Land Use Policy, 78, 493–​502.
Infante-​Amate, J., & Iriarte Goñi, I. 2017. Las bioenergías en España. Una serie de producción,
consumo y stocks entre 1860 y 2010.
Infante-​Amate, J., Soto, D., Iriarte Goñi, I., Aguilera, E., Cid, A., Guzmán, G.I., García-​
Ruiz, R., & González de Molina, M. 2014b. La producción de leña en España y sus
implicaciones en la transición energética. Una serie a escala provincial 1900–​2000.
DT-​AEHE Nº1416. http://​econpapers.repec.org/​paper/​ahedtaehe/​1416.htm (accessed
April 2, 2015
39

References 39

Infante-​Amate, J., Soto Fernandez, D., Aguilera, E., García-​Ruiz, R., Guzmán, G., Cid, A., &
González de Molina, M. 2015. The Spanish transition to industrial metabolism. Long-​
term material flow analysis 1860–​2010. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 19, 866–​876.
doi: DOI: 10.1111/​jiec.12261.
Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, IBGE. 2018. Censo Agropecuário. Brasil,
IBGE.
International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for
Development. 2009. Synthesis Report: A Synthesis of the Global and Sub-​ global
IAASTD Reports. Washington, DC: IAASTD.
IPES-​Food (International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems). 2016. From uniformity
to diversity: a paradigm shift from industrial agriculture to diversified agroecological
systems. www.ipes-​food.org/​agroecology (accessed November 30, 2016).
IPES-​Food (International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems). 2017. Too big to
feed; exploring the impacts of mega-​mergers, consolidation and concentration of power
in the agri-​food sector. www.ipes-​food.org/​_​img/​upload/​files/​CS2_​web.pdf (accessed
January 4, 2019).
IPES-​Food (International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems). 2018. Breaking
away from industrial food and farming systems; seven case studies of agroecological
transitions. www.ipes-​food.org/​_​img/​upload/​files/​CS2_​web.pdf (accessed January
4, 2019).
Izumi, B.T., Wright, D.W., & Hamm, M.W. 2010. Market diversification and social
benefits: motivations of farmers participating in farm to school programs. Journal of
Rural Studies, 26, 374–​382.
Jones, A., Pimbert, M., & Jiggins, J. 2011. Virtuous Circles: Values, Systems and Sustainability.
London: IIED; IUCN; CEESP.
Jørgensen, S.E., & Fath, B.D. 2004. Application of thermodynamic principles in ecology.
Ecological Complexity, 1, 267–​280.
Jørgensen, S.E., Fath, B.D., Bastianoni, S., Marques, J.C., Müller, F., Nielsen, S.N., Tiezzi, E.,
& Ulanowicz, R.E. 2007. A New Ecology: Systems Perspective. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Kantorowicz, E.H. 1985. Los dos cuerpos del rey. Un estudio sobre teología política medieval.
Madrid: Alianza Editorial.
Kay, J.J., Regier, A.H., Boyle, M., & Francis, G. 1999. An ecosystem approach for sustain-
ability: addressing the challenge for complexity. Futures, 31, 721–​742.
Kearney, M. 1996. Reconceptualizing the Peasantry. Colorado: Westview Press.
Koning, N. 1994. The Failure of Agrarian Capitalism Agrarian Politics in the UK, Germany,
the Netherlands and the USA, 1846–​1919. New York: Routledge.
Krausmann, F., Erb, K.-​H., Gingrich, S., Lauk, C., & Haberl, H. 2008a. Global patterns of
socioeconomic biomasss flows in the year 2000: a comprehensive assessment of supply,
consumption and constraints. Ecological Economics, 65, 471–​487.
Krausmann, F., Gingrich, S., Eisenmenger, N., Erb, K.-​H., Haberl, H., & Fischer-​Kowalski,
M. 2009. Growth in global materials use, GDP and population during the 20th
century. Ecological Economics, 68, 2696–​2705. doi: http://​dx.doi.org/​10.1016/​
j.ecolecon.2009.05.007.
Krausmann, F., Gingrich, S., & Nourbakhch-​Sabet, R. 2011. The metabolic transition in Japan.
Journal of Industrial Ecology, 15, 877–​892.
Krausmann, F., Haberl, H., Schulz, N.B., Erb, K.-​H., Darge, E., & Gaube, V. 2003. Land-​use
change and socioeconomic metabolism in Austria Part I: driving forces of land-​use
changes 1950–​1995. Land Use Policy, 201, 1–​20.
Krausmann, F., & Langthaler, E. 2019. Food regimes and their trade links: a socioecological
perspective. Ecological Economics, 160, 87–​95.
40

40 References

Krausmann, F., Schandl, H., Eisenmenger, N., Giljum, S., & Jackson, T. 2017a. Material flow
accounting: measuring global material use for sustainable development. Annual Review
of Environment and Resources, 42, 647–​75.
Krausmann, F., Schandl, H.Y., & Sieferle, R.P. 2008b. Socioecological regime transition in
Austria and United Kingdom. Ecologial Economics, 65, 187–​201.
Krausmann, F., Wiedenhofer, D., Lauka, K., Haas, W., Tanikawa, H., Fishman, T., Miatto,
A., Schandld, H., & Haberl, H. 2017b. Global socioeconomic material stocks rise 23-​
fold over the 20th century and require half of annual resource use. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences USA, 114, 1880–​1885.
Krugman, P., & Obstfeld, M. 2010. Economía internacional: teoría y política. Mexico: Editorial
Pearson Addison.
Lachman, D.A. 2013. A survey and review of approaches to study transitions. Energy Policy,
58, 269–​276.
Laclau, E. 2005. La razón populista. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Laclau, E. 2009. Laclau en debate: postmarxismo, populismo, multitud y acontecimiento
(entrevistado por Ricardo Camargo). Revista de Ciencia Política, 29, 815–​828.
Laforge, J.M.L., Anderson, C.R., & McLacham, S.M. 2017. Governments, grassroots, and
the struggle for local food systems: containing, coopting, contesting and collaborating.
Agriculture and Human Values, 34, 663–​681.
Laibman, D. 1992. Value, Technical Change and Crisis: Explorations in Marxist Economic
Theory. Abingdon: Routledge.
Lamine, C. 2015. La fabrique sociale et politique des paradigmes de l’écologisation. HDR
de sociologie, Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre la Défense. Remaniée et publiée en
2017 sous le titre La Fabrique sociale de l’écologisation de l’agriculture. Marseille:
La Discussion.
Lamine, C., Renting, H., Rossi, A., Wiskerke, J.S.C. (Han), & Brunori, G. 2012. Agri-​Food
systems and territorial development: innovations, new dynamics and changing govern-
ance mechanisms. In I. Darnhofer, D. Gibbon, & B. Dedieu (orgs.). Farming Systems
Research into the 21st Century: The New Dynamic. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 229–​56.
https://​doi.org/​10.1007/​978-​94-​007-​4503-​2_​11.
Lancaster, K.J. 1966. A new approach to consumer theory. Journal of Political Economics,
74, 132–​157.
Lang, T., & Barling, D. 2012. Food security and food sustainability: reformulating the debate.
Geographical Journal, 178, 313–​326.
Lattuca, A. 2011. La agricultura urbana como política pública: el caso de la ciudad de Rosario,
Argentina. Agroecología, 6, 97–​104.
Leach, G. 1976. Energy and Food Production. London: IPC Science and Tecnology.
Lee, R., & Marsden, T. 2009. The globalization and re-​localization of material flows: four
phases of food regulation. Journal of Law and Society, 36, 129–​144. doi:10.1111/​
j.1467-​6478.2009.00460.x.
Leff, E. 1986. Ecología y Capital. Mexico: Siglo XXI Editores.
Levidow, L., Pimbert, M., & Vanloqueren, G. 2014. Agroecological research: conforming –​
or transforming the dominant agro-​food regime? Agroecology and Sustainable Food
Systems, 38, 1127–​1155.
Levins, R. 2006. A whole-​system view of agriculture, people, and the rest of nature. In A.
Cohn, J. Cook, M. Fernández, R. Reider, & C. Steward (eds.). Agroecology and the
Struggle for Food Sovereignty in the Americas. Nottingham: Russell Press, pp. 34–​49.
Livi-​Bacci, M. 1999. Historia de la población europea. Barcelona: Editorial Crítica.
Long, N. 1986. Commoditization: thesis and antithesis. In N. Long et al., The Commoditization
Debate. Wageningen: Pudoc, pp. 8–​23.
41

References 41

Long, N. & Ploeg, J.D. van der. 1994. Heterogeneity, actor and structure: towards a
reconstitution of the concept of structure. In D. Booth (ed.). Rethinking Social
Development: Theory, Research, and Practice. Harlow: Longman, pp. 62–​90.
Loos, J., Abson, D.J., Chappell, M.J., Hanspach, J., Mikulcak, F., Tichit, M., & Fischer, J.
2014. Putting meaning back into “sustainable intensification”. Frontiers in Ecology and
the Environment, 12, 356–​361.
Lopes, A.P., & Jomalina, E. 2011. Agroecology: exploring opportunities from women’s
empowerment based on experiences from Brazil. In: Feminist Perspectives Towards
Transforming Economic Power. Toronto, Mexico City, Cape Town: Association of
Women’s Rights in Development.
López-​García, D., Pontijas, B., González de Molina, M., Guzmán-​Casado, G.I., Delgado, M.
& Infante, J. 2015. Diagnóstico para la conexión de la distribución comercial con la
producción endógena andaluza en el comercio local 2015. Junta de Andalucía: Dirección
General de Comercio.
López-​Moreno, I. 2014. Labelling the origin of food products: Towards sustainable territorial
development? PhD thesis. Wageningen: Wageningen University.
Lowder, S.K., Skoet, J., & Raney, T. 2016. The number, size, and distribution of farms, small-
holder farms, and family farms worldwide. World Development, 87, 16–​29.
Luhmann, N. 1984. Soziale Systeme: Grundriss einer allgemeine theorie. Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp.
Luhmann, N. 1986. The autopoiesis of social systems. In F. Geyer, & J.V. Zeuwen (eds.).
Sociocybernetic Paradoxes: Observation, Control and Evolution of Self-​ Steering
Systems. London: Sage, pp. 172–​192.
Luhmann, N. 1995. Social Systems. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Luhmann, N. 1998. Complejidad y modernidad. De la unidad a la diferencia. Editorial Trotta,
España.
Luhmann, N. 2009. ¿Cómo es posible el orden social? Barcelona: Herder.
Luhmann, N. 2010. Organización y decisión. Barcelona: Herder.
Lundqvist, J., de Fraiture, C., & Molden, D. 2008. Saving water: from field to fork –​curbing
losses and wastage in the food chain. Stockholm International Water Institute Policy
Brief, Stockholm.
Luxemburgo, R. 2010. Reforma ou revolução? São Paulo: Expressão Popular.
Machín B., Roque, A.M., Ávila, D.R., & Rosset, P.M. 2010. Revolución Agroecológica:
El Movimiento de Campesino a Campesino de la Anap en Cuba. Vía Campesina:
Anap.
MAGRAMA (Ministerio de Agricultura y Medio Ambiente). 2007. La alimentación en
España, 2006. Madrid: Ministerio de Agricultura, Alimentación y Medio Ambiente.
Majone, G. 2006. Agenda setting. In M. Moran (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Policy Public.
New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 228–​250.
MAPAMA (Ministerio de Agricultura, pesca y Alimentación). 2012. Informe del consumo de
alimentación en España 2012. Madrid: Ministerio de Agricultura, pesca Alimentación
y Medioambiente.
Margalef, R. 1980. La biosfera. Entre la termodinámica y el juego. Barcelona: Kairós.
Margalef, R. 1993. Teoría de los sistemas ecológicos. Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona.
Margalef, R. 1995. Aplicacions del caos determinsita en ecologia. In J. Flos (ed.). Ordre i caos
en ecologia. Barcelona: Publicacions Universitat de Barcelona, pp. 171–​184.
Marsden, T. 1991. Theoretical issues in the continuity of petty commodity production. In S.
Whatmore, P. Lowe, & T. Marsden (eds.). Rural Enterprise: Shifting Perspectives on
Small-​Scale Production. London: David Fulton Publishers.
Marsden, T. 2003. The Condition of Rural Sustainability. Assen: Royal van Gorcum.
42

42 References

Marsden, T., Banks, J., & Bristow, G. 2000. Food supply chain approaches: exploring their
role in rural development. Sociologia Ruralis, 40, 424–​438.
Marsden, T., & Sonnino, R. 2008. Rural development and the regional state: denying multi-
functional agriculture in the UK. Journal of Rural Studies, 24, 422–​431.
Martinez, S., Hand, M., Da Pra, M., Pollack, S., Ralston, K., Smith, T., Vogel, S., Clarck, S.,
Lorh, L., Low, S. & Newman, C., 2010. Local food systems; concepts, impacts, and
issues. Economicy Research Report 97. United States Department of Agriculture.
Martínez-​Alier, J. 2007. Marxism, social metabolism, and international trade. In A. Hornborg,
J.R. McNeill, & J. Martínez-​Alier (eds.). Rethinking Environmental History. World-​
System History and Global Environmental Change. Lanhan: Altamira Press, pp.
221–​237.
Martínez-​Alier, J., Munda, G., & O’Neill, J. 1998. Weak comparability of values as a founda-
tion for ecological economics. Ecological Economics, 26, 277–​286.
Martínez Torres, H., Namdar-​Iraní, M., & Saa Isamit, C. 2017. Las Políticas de Fomento
a la Agroecología en Chile, en PP-​AL (Red Políticas Públicas en América Latina y
el Caribe). In Políticas Públicas a favor de la Agroecología en América Latina y el
Caribe. Brasilia: PP-​AL, pp. 70–​90.
Massukado, L.M. & Balla, J.V. 2016. Panorama dos cursos e da pesquisa em agroecologia no
Brasil. COMCiência, Revista Eletrônica de Jornalismo Científico. LABJOR-​UNICAMPI/​
SBPC, 182 (October 1–​10). www.comciencia.br/​comciencia/​?section=8&edicao=127&
id=1548
Maturana, H.R., & Varela, F.J. 1980. Autopoiesis and Cognition. The Realization of the Living.
Boston: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science.
Mauss, M. [1925] 2011. Ensayo sobre el don. Forma y función del intercambio en las
sociedades arcaicas. Katz.
Mavrofides, T., Kameas, A., Papageorgiou, D., & Los, A. 2011. On the entropy of social
systems: a revision of the concepts of entropy and energy in the social context. Systems
Research and Behavioral Science, 28, 353–​368.
Mayer, A., Schaffartzik, A., Haas, W., & Rojas-​Sepúlveda, A. 2015. Patterns of global biomass
trade –​implications for food sovereignty and socio-​environmental conflicts. EJOLT
Report No. 20, 106 pp.
Mayumi, K. 1991. Temporary emancipation from land: from the industrial revolution to the
present time. Ecological Economics, 4, 35–​56.
Mayumi, K., & Giampietro, M 2006. The epistemological challenge of self-​ modifying
systems: governance and sustainability in the post-​normal science era. Ecological
Economics, 57, 382–​399.
Mazoyer, M., & Roudart, L. 2010. História das agriculturas no mundo; do neolítico à crise
contemporânea. São Paulo: Editora UNESP.
McMichael, P. 2006. Feeding the world: agriculture, development and ecology. In L. Panitch,
& C. Leys (eds.). Socialist Register 2007. London: Merlin Press, pp. 170–​194.
McMichael, P. 2009. A food regime genealogy. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 36, 139–​169.
McMichael, P. 2013. Food Regimes and Agrarian Questions. Rugby: Practical Action
Publishing.
McNeill, J.R. 2000. Something New under the Sun: An environmental history of the Twentieth
Century World. London: Penguin Books.
Méndez, V.E., Bacon, C.M., & Cohen, R. 2013. Agroecology as a transdisciplinary, participatory,
and action-​oriented approach. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 37, 3–​18.
Méndez, V.E., Bacon, C.M., Cohen, R., & Gliessman, S.R. (eds.). 2016. Agroecology:
A Transdisciplinary, Participatory and Action-​ oriented Approach. Boca Raton:
CRC Press.
43

References 43

Mendras, H. 1967. La fin des paysans –​innovations et changement dans l’agriculture

Francaise. Paris : Futuribles/​SEDEIS.
Meny, I., & Thoenig, J.C. 1992. La aparición de los Problemas Públicos. Las Políticas
Públicas. España: Ariel Ciencia Política.
Mier y Terán Giménez Cacho, M., Giraldo, O.F., Aldasoro, M., Morales, H., Ferguson, B.G.,
Rosset, P., Khadse, A., & Campos, C. 2018. Bringing agroecology to scale: key drivers
and emblematic cases. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 42, 637–​ 665.
DOI: 10.1080/​21683565.2018.1443313
Monteiro, C.A. 2009. Nutrition and health. The issue is not food, nor nutrients, so much as
processing. Public Health Nutrition, 12, 729–​731.
Monteiro, C.A., & Cannon, G. 2012. The impact of transnational “big food” companies on the
south: a view from Brazil. PLoS Medicine, 9(7), e1001252.
Monteiro, C.A., Levy, R.B., Claro, R.M., Ribeiro de Castro, I.R., & Cannon, G. 2010. A new
classification of foods based on the extent and purpose of their processing. Cadernos
De Saude Publica, 26, 2039–​2049.
Monteiro, C.A., Moubarac, J.C., Cannon, G., Ng, S. W., & Popkin, P. 2013. Ultra-​processed
products are becoming dominant in the global food system. Obesity, 14(Suppl. 2), 21–​28.
Mooney, P. 2018. Blocking the chain. Industrial food chain concentration. Big Data platforms
and food sovereignty solutions. ETC Group, Canada.
Moore, B. 1966. Social origins of dictatorship and democracy. In Lord and Peasant in the
Making of the Modern World. London: Penguin Books.
Moore, J.W. 2015. Capitalism in the web of life. In Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital.
London: Verso.
Moors, E.H.M., Rip, A., & Wiskerke, J.S.C. 2004. The dynamics of innovation; multilevel
co-​evolutionary perspective. In J.S.C. Wiskerke, & J.D. van der Ploeg (eds.). Seeds of
Transition; Essays on Novelty Production, Niches and Regimes in Agriculture. Assen:
Van Gorgu.
Moran, W. 2017. Políticas a favor de la producción orgánica y agroecología en El Salvador,
en PP-​AL (Red Políticas Públicas en América Latina y el Caribe. 2017). In Políticas
Públicas a favor de la Agroecología en América Latina y el Caribe. Brasilia: PP-​AL,
pp. 132–​146.
Morgan, S.L. 2011. Social learning among organic farmers and the application of the com-
munities of practice framework. The Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension,
17, 99–​112.
Morgan Állman, J. 2003. El cerebro en Evolución. Madrid: Ariel Neurociencia.
Morin, E. 1977. El método, I: La naturaleza de la naturaleza. Madrid: Cátedra.
Morin, E. 2007. O método 6: Ética. Porto Alegre: Sulina.
Morin, E. 2010. Eloge de la métamorphose. Le Monde. www.lemonde.fr/​idees/​article/​2010/​
01/​09/​eloge-​de-​la-​metamorphose-​par-​edgar-​morin_​1289625_​3232.html.
Muñoz, P., Giljum, S., & Roca, J. 2009. The raw material equivalents of international trade.
Journal of Industrial Ecology, 13, 881–​897.
Muradian, R., & Martínez Alier, J. 2001. Trade and environment: from Southern perspective.
Ecological Economics, 36, 286–​297.
Naredo, J.M. 2015. La economía y evolución: Historia y perspectivas de las categorías básicas
del pensamiento económico (4th ed.). Madrid: Siglo XXI.
Nelson, G.C., Rosegrant, M.W., Koo, J., Robertson, R., Sulser, T., Zhu, T., Ringler, C., Msangi,
S., Palazzo, A., Batka, M., et al. 2009. Climate Change. Impact on Agriculture and
Costs of Adaptation. Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute.
Nicholls, C.I., Altieri, M.A., & Vazquez, L. 2016. Agroecology: principles for the conversion
and redesign of farming systems. Journal of Ecosystem and Ecography, S5, 010.
44

44 References

Niederle, P., & Almeida, L. 2013. A nova arquitetura dos mercados para produtos orgânicos: o
debate da convencionalização. In P.A. Niederle, L. Almeida, & F.M. Vezzani
(orgs.). Agroecologia: práticas, mercados e políticas para uma nova agricultura.
Curitiba: Kairós, pp. 23–​67.
Niederle, P.A. 2014. Os agricultores ecologistas nos mercados para alimentos orgânicos:
contramovimentos e novos circuitos de comércio. Sustentabilidade em Debate, 5(3),
79–​97.
Nieremberg, D., & Halweil, B. 2005. Cultivando seguridad alimentaria. In La situación del
mundo 2005. Redefiniendo la seguridad mundial. Barcelona: Icaria, pp. 125–​144.
Nigren, A., & Rikoon,S. 2008. Political ecology revisited: integration of politics and ecology
does matter. Society and Natural Resources, 21, 767–​782.
Northfield, T.D., & Ives, A.R. 2013. Coevolution and the effects of climate change on interacting
species. PLoS Biology, 11(10), e1001685. doi:10.1371/​journal.pbio.1001685.
Nowak, M.A. 2006. Five rules for the evolution of cooperation. Science, 314(5805),
1560–​1563.
Oakland Institute. 2018. Agroecology case studies www.oaklandinstitute.org/​agroecology-​
case-​studies (accessed January 4, 2019).
OCDE/​FAO. 2017. Carne. In OCDE-​FAO Perspectivas Agrícolas 2017–​2026. Paris: OECD
Publishing.
Offe, C. 1990. Contradicciones en el Estado del Bienestar. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.
Okasha, S. 2006. Evolution and the Levels of Selection. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Okishio, N. 1961. Technical changes and the tate of profit. Kobe University Economic Review,
7, 85–​99.
Olson, M. 1971. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard Economic Studies.
Oostindie, H., Rudolf, B., Brunori, G., & Ploeg, J.D. van der. 2008. The endogeneity of rural
economies. In J.D. van der Ploeg & T. Marsden (eds.). Unfolding Webs; The Dynamics
of Regional Rural Development. Assen: Van Gorcum, pp. 53–​67
Orozco, A.P. 2004. Estrategias feministas de deconstrucción del objeto de estudio de la
economía. Foro Interno. Madrid, 4, 87–​117.
Ostrom, E. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ostrom, E. 2001. Commons, institutional diversity of. In Encyclopedia of Biodiversity, Volume
I. New York: Academic Press.
Ostrom, E. 2009. A general framework for analyzing sustainability of social-​ecological
systems. Science, 325, 419–​422.
Ostrom, E. 2013. Comprender la diversidad institucional. Oviedo: KRK.
Ostrom, E. 2015a. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective
Action. Canto classics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ostrom, E. 2015b. Beyond markets and states: polycentric governance of complex economic
systems. In D.H. Cole, & M.D. McGinnis (orgs.). Elinor Ostrom and the Bloomington
School of Political Economy: Polycentricity in Public Administration and Political
Science. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Overton, M. 1991. The determinant of crop yield in early modern England. In B. Campbell,
& M. Overton (eds.). Land, Labour and Livestock. Historical Studies in European
Agricultural Productivity. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Owen, W.F. 1966. The double developmental squeeze on agriculture. The American Economic
Review, LVI, 43–​67.
Pacífico, D.A. 2010. Avaliação de impacto das ações de formação/​ capacitação em
Agroecologia realizadas pelo DATER/​SAF, no período 2004 a 2009. Programa das
45

References 45

Nações Unidas para o Desenvolvimento Projeto PNUD/​PRONAF II –​BRA/​06/​010.

Brasília-​DF: PNUD.
Pahnke, A. 2015. Institutionalizing economies of opposition: explaining and evaluating the
success of the MST’s cooperatives and agroecological repeasantization. The Journal of
Peasant Studies, 42, 1087–​1107.
Parmentier, S. 2014. Scaling-​up Agroecological Approaches: What, Why and How? Brussels:
Oxfam-​Solidarity.
Parson, T. 1976. El sistema social. Madrid: Revista de Occidente.
Patrouilleau, M., Martínez, L., Cittadini, E., & Cittadini, R. 2017. Políticas públicas y desarrollo
de la agroecología en Argentina, en PP-​AL (Red Políticas Públicas en América Latina
y el Caribe. 2017. Políticas Públicas a favor de la Agroecología en América Latina y el
Caribe. Brasilia: PP-​AL, pp. 20–​43.
Pattee, H.H. 1995. Evolving self-​ reference: matter, symbols, and semantic closure.
Commununication and Cognition in Artificial Intelligence, 12, 9–​28.
Paulson, S., Gezon, L., & Watts, M. 2003. Locating the political in political ecology: an intro-
duction. Human Organization, 62, 205–​217.
Perez-​Cassarino, J. 2013. A construção social de mecanismos alternativos de mercados no
âmbito da Rede Ecovida de agroecologia. Curitiba: UFPR. www.acervodigital.ufpr.br/​
handle/​1884/​27480?show=full.
Pérez Rivero, J.A. 2016. Puesta en valor de los subproductos obtenidos de la almazara Coop.
Ntra. Sra. De las Virtudes y su potencial en el secuestro de carbono. Master’s thesis.
Master in Organic Farming. International University of Andalusia, Seville.
Perfecto, I., Vandermeer, J., & Wright, A. 2009. Nature’s Matrix: Linking Agriculture,
Conservation and Food Sovereignty. London: Earthscan.
Petersen, P. 2011. Metamorfosis agroecológica: un ensayo sobre Agroecologia Política.
Baeza: UNIA.
Petersen, P. 2017. Arreglos institucionales para la intensificación agroecológica: una
mirada al caso brasileño desde la Agroecología Política. PhD dissertation, Seville,
September 2017.
Petersen, P. 2018. Agroecology and the restoration of organic metabolism in agrifood systems.
In T. Marsden (ed.). The Sage Book of Nature. London: Sage, pp. 1448–​1467.
Petersen P., Mussoi, E.M., & Dal Soglio, F. 2013. Institutionalization of the agroecological
approaching Brazil: advances and challenges. Agroecology and Sustainable Food
Systems, 37, 103–​114.
Petersen, P., & Silveira, L.M. 2017. Agroecology, public policies and labor-​driven intensi-
fication: alternative development trajectories in the Brazilian semi-​ arid region.
Sustainability, 9, 535. doi:10.3390/​su9040535.
Peterson, G. 2000. Political ecology and ecological resilience: an integration of human and
ecological dynamics. Ecological Economics, 35, 323–​336.
Petrini, C., Bogliotti, C., Rava, R., & Scaffidi, C. 2016. La centralidad del alimento. Documento
congresual, 2012–​2016. Slow Food: https://​slowfood.com/​filemanager/​official_​docs/​
SFCONGRESS2012_​La_​centralidad_​del_​alimento.pdf
Pfister, C. 1990. The early loss of ecological stability in an Agrarian region. In P. Brimblecombe,
& C. Pfister (eds.). The Silent Countdown. Essays in European Environmental History.
Berlin: Springer, pp. 37–​55.
Piketty, T. 2014. El capital en el siglo XXI. Mexico: FCE.
Pimbert, M. 2015. Agroecology as an alternative vision to conventional development and
climate-​smart agriculture. Development, 58, 286–​298.
Pimbert, M.P. 2018. Democratizing knowledge and ways of knowing for food sovereignty,
agroecology, and biocultural diversity. In: M.P. Pimbert (ed.). Food Sovereignty,
46

46 References

Agroecology, and Biocultural Diversity. Constructing and Contesting Knowledge.

London: Routledge.
Pimentel, D., & Pimentel, M. 1979. Food, Energy and Society. London: Edward Arnold,.
Ploeg, J.D. van der. 1990. Labor, Markets, and Agricultural Production. Westview Special
Studies in Agriculture Science and Policy. Boulder: Westview Press.
Ploeg, J.D. van der. 1993. El proceso de trabajo agrícola y la mercantilización. In E. Sevilla
Guzman, & M. González de Molina (eds.). Ecología, campesinado e historia.
Madrid: Ediciones de la Piqueta, pp. 153–​196.
Ploeg, J.D. van der. 2007. Resistance of the third kind and the construction of sustain-
ability. www.jandouwevanderploeg.com/​EN/​publications/​articles/​resistance-​of-​the-​
third-​kind/​.
Ploeg, J.D. van der. 2008. The New Peasants. Struggles for the Autonomy and Sustainability in
an Era of Empire and Globalization. London: Earthscan.
Ploeg, J.D. van der. 2010. The peasant mode of production revisited. Rural Development:
Challenges and Interlinkages. www.jandouwevanderploeg.com/​EN/​publications/​
articles/​the-​peasant-​mode-​of-​production-​revisited/​.
Ploeg, J.D. van der. 2012. The drivers of change: the role of peasants in the creation of an
agroecological agriculture. Agroecología, 6, 47–​54.
Ploeg, J.D. van der. 2013. Peasants and the Art of Farming: A Chayanovian Manifesto.
Agrarian Change and Peasant Studies Series. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.
Ploeg, J.D. van der. 2015. Newly emerging, nested markets. A theoretical introduction. In
P. Hebinck, J.D. van der Ploeg, & S. Schneider (orgs.). Rural Development and the
Construction of New Markets. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 16–​40.
Ploeg, J.D. van der. 2018a. From de-​to repeasantization: the modernization of agriculture
revisited. Journal of Rural Studies, 61, 236–​243.
Ploeg, J.D. van der. 2018b. The New Peasantries; Rural Development in Times of Globalization,
2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
Ploeg, J.D. van der, Bouma, J., Rip, A., Rijkenberg, F.H.J., Ventura, F., & Wiskerke, J.S.C.
2004. On regimes, novelties, niches and co-​production”. In J.D. van der Ploeg, &
J.S.C. Wiskerke (eds.). Seeds of Transition : Essays on Novelty Production, Niches
and Regimes in Agriculture. European Perspectives on Rural Development. Assen: Van
Gorcum, pp. 1–​30. http://​edepot.wur.nl/​337404.
Polanyi, K. 2001. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our
Time. 2nd ed. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Polanyi, K. 2012. Formas de integração e estruturas de apoio. In A subsistência do homem e
ensaios correlatos. Rio de Janeiro: Contraponto Editora, pp. 83–​93.
Porto, S. 2016. Agroecologia e o Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos (PAA, Carta Maior,
June 14, 2016). http://​cartamaior.com.br/​?/​Editoria/​Meio-​Ambiente/​A-​agroecologia-​
e-​o-​Programa-​de-​Aquisicao-​de-​Alimentos-​PAA/​3/​36284 (accessed March 10, 2019).
PP-​AL (Red Políticas Públicas en América Latina y el Caribe). 2017. Políticas Públicas a
favor de la Agroecología en América Latina y el Caribe. Brasilia: PP-​AL. www.pp-​
al.org/​es
Pretty, J., & Bharucha, Z.P. 2014. Sustainable intensification in agricultural systems. Annals
of Botany, 114, 1571–​1596.
Prigogine, I. 1947. Etude Thermodynamique des Phenomenes Irreversibles. Paris: Liège.
Prigogine, I. 1955. Thermodynamics of irreversible processes and fluctuations. Temperature,
2, 215–​232.
Prigogine, I. 1962. Non-​equilibrium Statistical Mechanics. New York: Interscience.
Prigogine, I. 1978. Time structure and fluctuations. Science, 201, 777–​785.
47

References 47

Prigogine, I. 1983. ¿Tan sólo una ilusión? Una exploración del caos al orden. Barcelona:
Tusquets.
Puleo, A.H. 2011. Ecofemnismo: para otro mundo posible. Barcelona: Catedra.
Ramos García, M., Guzmán, G.I., & González de Molina, M. 2018. Dynamics of organic agri-
culture in Andalusia: moving toward conventionalization? Agroecology and Sustainable
Food Systems, 42, 328–​359.
Ramos-​Martin, J. 2003. Empiricism in ecological economics: a perspective from complex
systems theory. Ecological Economics, 46, 387–​398.
Ramos-​Martin, J. 2012. Economía Biofísica. Investigación y Ciencia, June, 68–​75.
Rawls, J. 1993. El liberalismo político. Barcelona: Crítica.
Raynolds, L.T. 2004. The globalization of organic agro-​food networks. World Development,
32, 725–​743.
Reardon, T., Timmer, C.P., Barrett, C.B., & Berdegué, J. 2003. The rise of supermarkets in
Africa, Asia and Latin America. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 85,
1140–​1146.
Reed, M. 2009. For whom? The governance of organic food and farming in the UK. Food
Policy, 34, 280–​286.
Reher, D., & Camps, E. 1991. Las economías familiares dentro de un contexto histórico
comparado. Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 55, 65–​91.
Renting, H., & Wiskerke, H. 2010. New emerging roles for public institutions and civil
society in the promotion of sustainable local agro-​food systems. 9th European IFSA
Symposium, Vienna.
Renting, H., Schermer, M., & Rossi, A. 2012. Building food democracy: exploring civic
food networks and newly emerging forms of food citizenship. International Journal of
Sociology of Agriculture and Food, 19, 289–​307.
Retamozo, M. 2017. La teoría del populismo de Ernesto Laclau: una introducción. Estudios
Políticos, 41, 157–​184.
Riechmann, J. 2006. Biomimesis: ensayos sobre imitación de la naturaleza, ecosocialismo y
autocontención. Madrid: La Catarata.
Rigby, D., & Bown, S. 2003. Organic food and global trade: is the market delivering agricul-
tural sustainability? Discussion Paper Series no. 0326. School of Economic Studies,
University of Manchester.
Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, A., Chapin, F.S., Lambin, E.F., Lenton, T.M.,
Scheffer, M., Folke, C., Schellnhuber, H.J., et al. 2009a. A safe operating space for
humanity. Nature, 461, 472–​475.
Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, Å., Chapin, F.S., Lambin, E., Lenton, T.M., Scheffer,
M., Folke, C., Schellnhuber, H.J., et al. 2009b. Planetary boundaries: exploring the safe
operating space for humanity. Ecology and Society,14(2). doi:10.5751/​ES-​03180-​140232.
Rosen, R. 1985. Anticipatory Systems: Philosophical, Mathematical and Methodological
Foundations. New York: Pergamon Press.
Rosen, R. 2000. Essays on Life Itself. New York: Columbia University Press.
Rosset, P.M. 2013. Re-​thinking agrarian reform, land and territory in La Vía Campesina.
Journal of Peasant Studies, 40, 721–​775.
Rosset, P. 2003. Food sovereignty: global rallying cry of farmer movements. Institute for Food
and Development Policy Backgrounder, 9(4), Fall, 4 pp.
Rosset, P., & Altieri, M. 2017. Agroecology: Science and Politics. Agrarian Change and
Peasant Studies Series. Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing.
Rougoor, C.W., Zeijts, H. van, Hofreither, M.F., & Bäckman, S. 2001. Experiences with fertil-
izer taxes in Europe. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 44, 877–​887.
48

48 References

Roy, P., Nei, D., Orikasa, T., Xu, Q., Okadome, H., Nakamura, N., & Shiina, T. 2009. A review
of life cycle assessment (LCA) on some food products. Journal of Food Engineering,
90, 1–​10.
Royal Society, The. 2009. Reaping the Benefits: Science and the Sustainable Intensification of
Global Agriculture. London: The Royal Society, pp. 1–​72.
Sabatier, P., & Jenkins-​Smith, H. 1993. Policy Change and Learning: An Advocacy Coalition
Approach. Boulder: Westview Press.
Sabatier, P.A., & Weible, C.M. 2014. Theories of the Policy Process. Boulder: Westview Press.
Sabourin, E.; Guéneau, S.; Colonna, J., Silva, L. T. da. (orgs). Construção de políticas de
agroecologia (e produção orgânica) nos estados federados do Brasil. Rio de Janeiro,
PP-AL/E-Papers. In press.
Sabourin, E., Niederle, P., Le Coq, J.F., Vázquez, L., & Patrouilleau, M.M 2017. Análisis
comparativo en escala regional, en PP-​AL (Red Políticas Públicas en América Latina y
el Caribe. 2017. Políticas Públicas a favor de la Agroecología en América Latina y el
Caribe. Brasilia: PP-​AL, pp. 196–​213.
SAF/​MDA (Secretaria da Agricultura Familiar/​ Ministério do Desenvolvimento Agrário).
2004. Programa Nacional de Apoio à Agricultura de Base Ecológica nas Unidades
Familiares de Produção. Brasília-​DF: SAF/​MDA.
Sahlins, M. 1960. Evolution and Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.
Sánchez, A.L. 1999. La crítica de la economía de mercado en Karl Polanyi: el análisis
institucional como pensamiento para la acción. Revista española de investigaciones
sociológicas, 86, 27–​54.
Santa Marín, J.F., & Toro Betancur, A. 2015. Tribología: pasado, presente y futuro.
TecnoLógicas, 18, 09–​10. www.scielo.org.co/​scielo.php?script=sci_​arttext&pid=
S0123-​77992015000200001&lng=en&tlng=es
Santos, M. 1994. O retorno do território. In M. Santos, M.A. De Souza, & M.L. Silveira (orgs.).
Território: Globalização e Fragmentação. São Paulo: Hucitec/​Anpur, pp. 15–​20.
Scartascini, C., Stein, E., & Tommasi, M. 2009. Political Institutions, Intertemporal
Cooperation and the Quality of Policies. Working paper, Inter-​American Development
Bank, Research Department, No. 676.
Schaffartzik, A., Mayer, A, Gingrich, S., Eisenmenger, N., Loy, C. & Krausmann, F. 2014.
The global metabolic transition: regional patterns and trends of globalmaterial flows,
1950–​2010. Global Environmental Change, 26, 87–​97.
Schandl, H., Grünbühel, C., Haberl, H., & Weisz, H. 2002. Handbook of Physical Accounting.
Measuring bio-​physical dimensions of socioeconomic activities MFA –​EFA –​HANPP.
Vienna: Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of Austrian Universities (IFF).
Schandl, H., Hatfield-​Dodds, S., Wiedmann, T., Geschke, A., Cai, Y., West, J., Newth, D.,
Baynes, T., Lenzen, M., & Owen, A. 2016. Decoupling global environmental pressure
and economic growth: scenarios for energy use, materials use and carbon emissions.
Journal of Cleaner Products, 132, 45–​56.
Schandl, H., & Krausmann, F. 2007. The great transformation: a socio-​metabolic reading of
the industrialization of United Kingdom. In M. Fisher-​Kowalski, & H. Haberl (eds.).
Socioecological Transitions and Global Change. Trajectories of Social Metabolism and
Land Use. Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, pp. 83–​115.
Scheffer, M., van Bavel, B., van de Leemput, I.A., & van Nes, E.H. 2017. Inequality in
nature and society. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 114(50),
13154–​13157.
Scheidel, A., & Sorman, A.H. 2012. Energy transitions and the global land rush: ultimate
drivers and persistent consequences. Global Environmental Change, 22, 559–​794.
Schelling, Th. 1989. Micromotivos y macroconductas. Mexico DF: Fondo de Cultura
Económica.
49

References 49

Schlich, E., & Fleissner, U. 2005. The ecology of scale: assessment of regional energy turn-
over and comparison with global food. International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment,
10, 219–​223.
Schmidhuber, J. 2006. The EU diet –​evolution, evaluation and impacts of the CAP. FAO
Documents, 2006. www.fao.org/​fileadmin/​templates/​esa/​Global_​persepctives/​
Presentations/​Montreal-​JS.pdf
Schmitt, C., Niederle, P., Ávila, M., Sabourin, E., Petersen, P., Silveira, L., Assis, W., Palm, J.,
& Fernandes, G.B 2017. A experiência brasileira de construção de políticas públicas em
favor da agroecologia, en PP-​AL (Red Políticas Públicas en América Latina y el Caribe.
2017. Políticas Públicas a favor de la Agroecología en América Latina y el Caribe.
Brasilia, PP-​AL, pp. 44–​69.
Schneider, S., & Escher, F.A 2011. Contribuição de Karl Polanyi para a sociologia
do desenvolvimento rural. Sociologias, 13(27), 180–​219. doi:10.1590/​S1517-​
45222011000200008.
Schneidewind, U., Singer-​Brodowski, M., Augenstein, K., & Stelzer, F. 2016. Pledge for a
transformative science –​a conceptual framework. Working Paper no. 191, Wuppertal
Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Wuppertal, Germany.
Schor, J.B. 2005. Prices and quantities: unsustainable consumption and the global economy.
Ecological Economics, 55, 309–​320.
Schotter, A. 1981. The Economics of Social Institutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Scott, J.C. 1976. The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast
Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Scott, J.C.1998. Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition
have Failed. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Serrano, J.L. 2007. Pensar a la vez la ecología y el estado. In F. Garrido, M. González de
Molina, J.L. Serrano, & J.L. Solana (eds.). El paradigma ecológico en las ciencias
sociales. Barcelona: Icaria, pp. 155–​199.
Sevilla Guzmán, E., & González de Molina, M. 1990. Ecosociología: Elementos teóricos para
el análisis de la coevolución social y ecológica en la agricultura. Revista Española De
Investigaciones Sociológicas, 52, 7–​45.
Sevilla Guzmán, E., & González de Molina, M 2005. Sobre a evoluçao do conceito de
campesinato. São Paulo: Editora de Expressao Popular.
Shanin, T. 1966. The peasantry as a political factor. The Sociological Review, 14, 5–​27.
doi:10.1111/​j.1467-​954X.1966.tb01148.x.
Shanin, T. 1979. Definiendo al campesinado: conceptualizaciones y desconceptualizaciones.
Pasado y presente de un debate marxista. Agricultura y Sociedad, 11, 9–​52.
Shanin, T. 1988. Expolary economies: a political economy of margin. Connections, 11(3),
18–​22.
Shanin, T. 1990. Defining Peasants. Essays Concerning Rural Societies, Explorary Economies,
and Learning from them in the Contemporary World. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Sherwood, S., Schut, M., & Leeuwis, C. 2012. Learning in the social wild: encounters
between Farmer Field Schools and agricultural science and development in Ecuador.
In H.R. Ojha, A. Hall, & R. Sulaiman (eds.). Adaptive Collaborative Approaches in
Natural Resources Governance: Rethinking Participation, Learning and Innovation.
London: Routledge, pp. 102–​137.
Shils, E. 1956. The Torment of Secrecy: The Background and Consequences of American
Security Policies. New York: Wiley.
Sieferle, P. 2001. Qué es la Historia Ecológica. In: M., González de Molina, & J. Martínez
Alier (eds.). Naturaleza Transformada. Estudios de Historia Ambiental en Espa˜na.
Barcelona: Icaria.
50

50 References

Silliprandi, E. 2015. Mulheres e Agroecologia; transformando o campo, as florestas e as

pessoas. Rio de Janeiro: URFJ.
Singer, P 2002. One World: The Ethics of Globalization. New Haven: Yale University
Press.
Singh, S.J., Krausmann, F., Gingrich, S., Haberl, H., Erb, K.-​H., & Lanz, P. 2012. India’s
biophysical economy, 1961–​2008. Sustainability in a national and global context.
Ecological Economics, 76, 60–​69. doi:10.1016/​j.ecolecon.2012.01.022.
Smil, V. 2001 [1999]. Energías. Una guía ilustrada de la biosfera y la civilización.
Barcelona: Editorial Crítica.
Smith, A., & Raven, R. 2012. What is protective space? Reconsidering niches in transitions to
sustainability. Research Policy, 41, 1025–​1036.
Sosa, B.M., Jaime, A.M.R., Lozano, D.R.Á., & Rosset, P.M. (n.d.). Revolución Agroecológica: el
Movimiento de Campesino a Campesino de la ANAP en Cuba. La Habana: ANAP.
Steffen, W., Broadgate, W., Deutsch, L., Gaffney, O., & Ludwig, C. 2015a. The trajectory of
the Anthropocene: the great acceleration. Anthropological Review, 2, 81–​98.
Steffen, W., Richardson, K., Rockström, J., Cornell, S.E., Fetzer, I., Bennett, E.M., Biggs, R.,
Carpenter, S.R., de Vries, W., de Wit, C.A., et al. 2015b. Planetary boundaries: guiding
human development on a changing planet. Science, 347(6223). doi:10.1126/​
science.1259855
Steinhart, J.S., & Steinhart, C.E. 1974. Energy use in the US food system. Science,184(4134),
307–​316.
Stoker, G. 1998. Governance as theory: five propositions. International Social Science
Journal, 50(155), 17–​28.
Subirats, J., Knoepfel, P., Larrue, C., & Varone, F. 2012. Análisis y gestión de políticas
públicas. Barcelona: Ariel.
Swannack, T.M., & Grant, W.E. 2008. Systems ecology. Encyclopedia of Ecology, 3477–​3481.
Swanson, G.A., Bailey, K.D., & Miller, J.G. 1997. Entropy, social entropy and money: a living
systems theory perspective. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 141, 45–​65.
Tainter, J.A. 1988. The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Tainter, J. 2007. Scale and dependency in World Systems: local societies in convergent
evolution. In A. Hornborg, J.R. McNeill, & and J. Martínez-​Alier (eds.). Rethinking
Environmental History. Lanhan: Altamira Press, pp. 361–​378.
Tapia, J.A., & Astarita, R. 2011. La Gran Recesión y el capitalismo del siglo XXI.
Madrid: Libros La Catarata.
Tello, E., Garrabou, R., Cussó, X., & Olarieta, J.R. 2008. Una interpretación de los cambios
de uso del suelo desde el punto de vista del metabolismo social agrario. La comarca
catalana del Vallès, 1853–​ 2004. Revista Iberoamericana de Economía Ecológica,
7, 97–​115
Tello, E., Garrabou, R., Cussó, X., & Olarieta, J.R. 2010. Sobre la sostenibilidad de los
sistemas agrarios. Balances de nutrientes y sistemas de fertilización en la agricultura
catalana a mediados del siglo XIX. In R. Garrabou, & M. González de Molina (eds.).
La reposición de la fertilidad en los sistemas agrarios tradicionales. Barcelona: Icaria.
Tello, E., Galán, E., Sacristán, V., Moreno, D., Cunfer, G., Guzmán, G., González de Molina,
M., Krausmann, F., & Gingrich, S. 2014. A proposal for a workable analysis of Energy
Return on Investment (EROI). in agroecosystems. Social Ecology Working Paper 14,
Vienna.
Thirsk, J. 1997. Alternative Agriculture: A History –​From the Black Death to the Present Day.
New York: Oxford University. Press.
51

References 51

Tilman, D., Balzer, C., Hill, J., & Befort, B.L. 2011. Global food demand and the sustainable
intensification of agriculture. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA,
108, 20260–​20264.
Tilman, D., & Clark, M. 2014. Global diets link environmental sustainability and human
health. Nature, 515, 518–​522.
Tilman, D., Fargione, J., Wolff, B., D’Antonio, C., Dobson, A., Howarth, R., Schindler, D.,
Schlesinger, W.H., Simberloff, D., & Swackhamer, D. 2001. Forecasting agriculturally
driven global environmental change. Science, 292, 281–​284.
Tittonell, P., Klerkx, L., Baudron, F., Félix, G.F., Ruggia, A., Apeldoorn, D., Dogliotti, S.,
Mapfumo, P., & Rossing, W.A.H. 2016. Ecological intensification: local innovation
to address global challenges. Sustainable Agriculture Reviews, 19, 1–​34. doi:10.1007/​
978-​3-​319-​26777-​7_​1.
Tirole, J. 2016. Économie du bien commun. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.
Toledo, V.M. 1990. «The ecological rationality of peasant production», M. Altieri y S. Hecht
(eds. Agroecology and Small Farm Production, CRC Press, USA, 53–​60.
Toledo, V.M. 1993. La racionalidad ecológica de la producción campesina. In E. Sevilla, &
M. González de Molina (eds.). Ecología, campesinado e Historia. Madrid: La Piqueta,
pp. 197–​218.
Toledo, V.M. 1994. La Apropiación Campesina de la Naturaleza: una aproximación etno-​
ecológica. Tesis de Doctor en Ciencias, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México.
Toledo, V.M. 1995. Campesinidad, agroindustrialidad, sostenibilidad: los fundamentos
ecológicos e históricos del desarrollo rural. In Cuadernos de trabajo del grupo
interamericano para el desarrollo sostenible de la agricultura y los recursos naturales.
No. 3, 29 pp.
Toledo, V.M. 1999. Las “disciplinas híbridas”: 18 enfoques interdisciplinarios sobre naturaleza
y sociedad. Persona y Sociedad, XIII, 21–​26.
Toledo, V.M. 2012a. Los grandes problemas ecológicos, in A. Bartra (ed.). Los Grandes
Problemas Nacionales. Barcelona: Editorial Itaca, pp. 29–​34.
Toledo, V.M. 2012b. La Agroecología en Latinoamérica: tres revoluciones, una misma
transformación. Agroecología, 6, 37–​46.
Toledo, V.M. 2015. COP 21: entre el mono pensante y el mono demente. La Jornada.
www.jornada.unam.mx/​2015/​12/​08/​opinion/​020a2pol.
Toledo, V.M., & Barrera-​ Bassols, N. 2008. La Memoria Biocultural. La importancia
agroecológica de las sabidurías tradicionales. Barcelona: Editorial Icaria.
Toledo, V.M., & Barrera Bassols, N. 2017. Political agroecology in Mexico: a path toward
sustainability. Sustainability, 92, 268.
Toledo, V.M., Carabias, J., Mapes, C., & Toledo, C. 1985. Ecología y autosuficiencia
alimentaria. Mexico: Siglo XXI.
Torres-​Melo, J., & Santander, J. 2013. Introducción a las políticas públicas Conceptos
y herramientas desde la relación entre Estado y ciudadanía. Bogota: IEMP ediciones.
Tyrtania, L. 2008. La indeterminación entrópica Notas sobre disipación de energía, evolución
y complejidad. Desacatos, 28, 41–​68.
Tyrtania, L. 2009. Evolución y sociedad: termodinámica de la supervivencia para una
sociedad a escala humana. Mexico: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana.
UK Government Office for Science. Foresight 2011. The Future of Global Food and Farming;
Final Project Report. London: Government Office for Science London.
Ulanowicz, R.E. 1983. Identifying the structure of cycling in ecosystems. Mathematical
Biosciences, 65, 210–​237.
52

52 References

Ulanowicz, R.E. 2004. On the nature of ecodynamics. Ecological Complexity, 1, 341–​354.

UN. 2015a. Paris Agreement: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
http://​unfccc.int/​files/​essential_​background/​convention/​application/​pdf/​english_​paris_​
agrement.pdf.
UN. 2015b. Transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. UN.
https://​sustainabledevelopment.un.org/​content/​documents/​21252030%20Agenda%20
for%20Sustainable%20Development%20web.pdf.
UN. 2016. New UN Decade aims to eradicate hunger, prevent malnutrition. UN News Centre.
May 4, 2016. www.un.org/​apps/​news/​story.asp?NewsId=53605#.WaCudsaQyJC.
UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme). 1991. World Map of Status of Human-​
induced Soil Degradation. An Explanatoy Note. Wageningen: UNEP/​ISRC.
UNEP. 1994. The Pollution of Lakes and Reservoirs. Kenya: UNEP.
UNEP. 2010. Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production. Priority
Products and Materials. Paris: UNEP.
UNEP. 2011. Decoupling Natural Resource Use and Environmental Impacts from Economic
Growth. A Report of the Working Group on Decoupling to the International Resource
Panel. Lausanne: UNEP.
UNEP. 2012. The end to cheap oil: a threat to food security and an incentive to
reduce fossil fuels in agriculture. UNEP Sioux Falls. http://​ na.unep.net/​ geas/​
getUNEPPageWithArticleIDScript.php?article_​id=81 (accessed August 30, 2015).
UNEP. 2016. Global Material Flows and Resource Productivity. Assessment Report for the
UNEP International Resource Panel.
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. 2013. Trade and Environment Review
2013: Wake Up before it is Too Late: Make Agriculture Truly Sustainable Now for Food
Security in a Changing Climate. Geneva: Author.
Valle Rivera, M. del C. del, & Martínez, J.M. T. (orgs.). 2017. Gobernanza territorial y
Sistemas Agroalimentarios Localizados en la nueva ruralidad. Mexico: Red de
Sistemas Agroalimentarios Localizados (Red Sial-​México).
Vázquez, L., Marzin, J., & González, N. 2017. Políticas públicas y transición hacia la agricultura
sostenible sobre bases agroecológicas en Cuba, en PP-​AL (Red Políticas Públicas en
América Latina y el Caribe. 2017. Políticas Públicas a favor de la Agroecología en
América Latina y el Caribe. Brasilia: PP-​AL, pp. 108–​131.
Ventura, F., Brunori, G., Milone, P., & Berti, G. 2008. The rural web: a synthesis. In J.D. van
der Ploeg, & T. Marsden (eds.). Unfolding Webs; The Dynamics of Regional Rural
Development. Assen: Van Gorcun.
Vilhena, D.A., & Antonelli, A. 2015. A network approach for identifying and delimiting bio-
geographical regions. Nature Communications, 6, 6848.
Walker, P.A. 2007. Political ecology: where is the politics? Progress in Human Geography,
31, 363–​369.
Wallerstein, I. 1974. The Modern World System. Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the
European World-​economy in the Sixteenth Century. London: Academic Press.
Wallerstein, I. 2005. Análisis de sistemas-​mundo, una introducción. Mexico: Siglo XXI
Editores.
Warde, P. 2009. The environmental history of pre-​industrial agriculture in Europe. In S.
Sörlin, & P. Warde (eds.). Nature’s End: History and Environment. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan Press.
Weis, T. 2013. The Ecological Hoofprint: The Global Burden of Industrial Livestock. London:
Zed Books.
Wezel, A., Bellon, S., Doré, T., Francis, C., Vallod, D., & David, C. 2009. Agroecology as a
science, a movement and a practice. A review. Agronomy for Sustainable Development,
29, 503–​515.
53

References 53

Wironen, M.B., Bartlett, R., & Erickson, J.D. 2019. Deliberation and the promise of a deeply
democratic sustainability transition. Sustainability, 11, 1023.
Wiskerke, J.S.C. 2009. On places lost and places regained: reflections on the alternative food
geography and sustainable regional development. International Planning Studies, 14,
369–​387. doi:10.1080/​13563471003642803.
Witzke, H., & Noleppa, S. 2010. EU agricultural production and trade: can more efficiency
prevent increasing ‘land grabbing’ outside of Europe? OPERA Research Center.
www.appgagscience.org.uk/​linkedfiles/​Final_​Report_​Opera.pdf (accessed June
20, 2013).
World Bank. 2009. The World Bank Annual Report 2009. Washington, DC: World Bank.
World Bank. 2009. http://​databank.worldbank.org/​data/​(accessed March 20, 2019).
World Future Council & IFOAM. 2018. Future Policy Award 2018. Scaling up Agroecology.
Evaluation Report. Bonn, Hamburg, Geneva: World Future Council & IFOAM–​
Organics International.
World Resources Institute. 1999. La Situación Del Mundo, 1999. Lester Brown, Christopher
Flavin & Hillary French (eds.). Barcelona: Icaria.
World Resources Institute. 2002. La Situación Del Mundo, 2002. Lester Brown, Christopher
Flavin & Hillary French (eds.). Barcelona: Icaria.
Wright, I. 2005. The social architecture of capitalism. Physica A, 346, 589–​620.
Wright, I. 2017. The social architecture of capitalism. Things are getting worse. From
Here to There. Adventures in Marxist Theory. November 17, 2017. (https://​
ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/​2017/​11/​16/​the-​social-​architecture-​of-​capitalism/​ (accessed
March 2, 2019).
Wrigley, E.A. 1985. Historia y Población. Introducción a la demografía histórica. Barcelona:
Crítica.
Wrigley, E.A. 1993. Cambio, continuidad y azar. Carácter de la Revolución Industrial inglesa.
Barcelona: Editorial Crítica.
Wrigley, E.A. 2004. Poverty, Progress, and Population. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Zanias, G.P. 2005. Testing for trends in the terms of trade between primary commodities and
manufactured goods. Journal of Development Economics, 78, 49–​59.
Zhou, Y. 2000. Smallholder Agriculture, Sustainability and the Syngenta Foundation.
Syngenta Foundation. https://​pdfs.semanticscholar.org/​b6b9/​3f6cdeffc8b92278df
329c4a2662b80a1bbb.pdf.