The Prism of Expanding Peasants’ Rights: A Critical Investigation of Diverse Frames Applied to La Vía Campesina’s Human Rights Engagements

Abstract

Abstract Since its foundation in 1993, La Vía Campesina has surged to the forefront of the global alter-globalization movement of movements, mobilizing human rights discourse to promote small-scale sustainable agriculture as a key component of social justice, equity, dignity, and autonomy everywhere. This literature review argues that food sovereignty—La Vía Campesina’s best known, rights-based innovation—inflects a range of other interrelated but distinct frames that variously foreground peasants’ rights, “peasantness,” land, cultural recognition, and collective emancipation, prefiguring an array of prospects for the expansion of human rights to peasants and other marginalized populations confronting the failures of capitalist globalization.