Panel: Decolonial, Feminist and Queer Perspectives for Authoritarian Times: World Making as Politics
The current global order has shaped corporate food regime that has reflected on neoliberal food policies in South Korea, which resulted in disparaging women peasants’ social status increasing their dual work to farming and household chores. In the basis of Gramscian social movement theory, for social movement from above, the Korean governments’ food polices were explored by critical discourse analysis and in terms of its counter-hegemony movement from below, the study was conducted by participatory action research.
In the framework of Gramscian international political economy, Korean governments have formed neoliberal historic bloc that has been dispersed with several regional and global free trades as affected by neoliberal globalization. The type of developmental state in Korea had forced and pressured Korean peasants to adopt these neoliberal food policies formulating urban and middle-class’ supports that had later shaped as ‘common sense’ to be easy to obtain supports from civil society for the necessity of openness to free trades. In this process, many women peasants had to conduct dual jobs of harsh farming and house work, which led to being disregarded for women’s care work to generate male farmers’ labour power as a form of social regeneration.
Conclusion: Counter hegemonic food sovereignty movement (Feminism agroecology). Cited by Silvia Federich’s social reproduction theory, there are ongoing efforts to make land be co-owned with male to invoke lowered women’s economic and social status into this official institution. Through feminism political ecology, women peasants have implemented to conserve indigenous seeds by harvesting Sister’s Garden against invading of transnational food companies’ introduction to generic modified seeds, which is being against governments’ neoliberal food policies.
Aside from the above, women peasant movement has attempted to form counter-historic bloc with civil society that is for example environmental movement to break down governments’ neoliberal historic bloc by making cooperation with diverse actions including conferences and demonstrations.
