Thresholds of resistance: agroecology, resilience and the agrarian question

ABSTRACT A growing body of literature supports agroecology as a pathway to climate resilience – a claim steadily being adopted by development institutions. However, agroecology's agrarian limitations are often overlooked. Politically contested understandings of resilience introduce further confusion. Agroecological claims of superior climate resiliency cannot be understood in isolation from the socially unsustainable conditions of many smallholders, especially women. Reviewing agroecological resilience at different scales, we find that the theoretical approach to resilience in development discourse poorly accounts for agrarian vulnerability/resilience. We revisit the birthplace of the Campesino a Campesino movement in Guatemala where resilience intersects with agroecology and longstanding agrarian demands.

• Publication year

  2021

• Venue

  The Journal of Peasant Studies

• Publication date

  2021-01-28

• Fields of study

  Agricultural and Food Sciences, Political Science, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1080/03066150.2020.1847090
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Panarchy

  2021cited by this paper
• Regenerative agriculture: merging farming and natural resource conservation profitably

  2018cited by this paper
• The global political economy of climate change, agriculture and food systems

  2018cited by this paper
• The Agrarian Question

  2018cited by this paper
• Collective Agency and Community Resilience: A Theoretical Framework to Understand Agricultural Resistance

  2017cited by this paper
• THE FUTURE OF FOOD AND CHALLENGES FOR AGRICULTURE IN THE 21st CENTURY:

  2017cited by this paper
• Rights for resilience: food sovereignty, power, and resilience in development practice

  2016cited by this paper
• Realizing Resilient Food Systems

  2016cited by this paper
• Resilience, Development and Global Change

  2016cited by this paper
• The Number, Size, and Distribution of Farms, Smallholder Farms, and Family Farms Worldwide

  2016cited by this paper
• Agroecology and the design of climate change-resilient farming systems

  2015cited by this paper
• Understanding agrobiodiversity and the rise of resilience: analytic category, conceptual boundary object or meta-level transition?

  2015cited by this paper
• Multi-level Stakeholder Influence Mapping: Visualizing Power Relations Across Actor Levels in Nepal’s Agricultural Climate Change Adaptation Regime

  2015cited by this paper
• Using the politicized institutional analysis and development framework to analyze (adaptive) comanagement: farming and water resources in England

  2015cited by this paper
• Enhancing agroecosystem performance and resilience through increased diversification of landscapes and cropping systems

  2015cited by this paper
• Global environmental change I

  2014cited by this paper
• REVIEW ARTICLE: RESILIENCE, POVERTY AND DEVELOPMENT

  2014cited by this paper
• Beyond divides: prospects for synergy between resilience and pathways approaches to sustainability

  2014cited by this paper
• Social Attractors: A Proposal to Enhance “Resilience Thinking” about the Social

  2013cited by this paper
• Vulnerability: reflections on a new ethical foundation for law and politics

  2013cited by this paper
• Agroecology Scaling Up for Food Sovereignty and Resiliency

  2012cited by this paper
• Adaptation to Climate Change: From Resilience to Transformation

  2012cited by this paper
• From climate-smart agriculture to climate-smart landscapes

  2012cited by this paper
• The Campesino-to-Campesino agroecology movement of ANAP in Cuba: social process methodology in the construction of sustainable peasant agriculture and food sovereignty

  2011cited by this paper
• Resilience in Agriculture through Crop Diversification: Adaptive Management for Environmental Change

  2011cited by this paper
• Genealogies of resilience

  2011cited by this paper
• The New Peasantries. Struggles for Autonomy and Sustainability in an Era of Empire and Globalization – By Jan Douwe van der Ploeg

  2011cited by this paper
• On confluences and divergences

  2011cited by this paper
• Adaptation to environmental change

  2011cited by this paper
• Challenges and opportunities in soil organic matter research

  2009cited by this paper
• Zero-Sum World

  2009cited by this paper
• A multi-scale assessment of hurricane impacts on agricultural landscapes based on land use and topographic features

  2008cited by this paper
• Re-framing Resilience: Trans-disciplinarity, Reflexivity and Progressive Sustainability – a Symposium Report

  2008cited by this paper
• Functional group diversity of bee pollinators increases crop yield

  2008cited by this paper
• The New Peasantries: Struggles for Autonomy and Sustainability in an Era of Empire and Globalization

  2008cited by this paper
• Organic agriculture and the global food supply

  2007cited by this paper
• Adaptation to Environmental Change: Contributions of a Resilience Framework

  2007cited by this paper
• Pathways to sustainability: an overview of the STEPS Centre approach

  2007cited by this paper
• Resource-conserving agriculture increases yields in developing countries.

  2006cited by this paper
• Agroecology: The Ecology of Sustainable Food Systems

  2006cited by this paper
• Biodiversity, ecosystem function, and resilience: ten guiding principles for commodity production landscapes

  2006cited by this paper
• Campesino A Campesino: Voices from Latin America's Farmer to Farmer Movement for Sustainable Agriculture

  2006cited by this paper
• Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability in Social–ecological Systems

  2004cited by this paper
• Markets Drive the Specialization Strategies of Forest Peoples

  2004cited by this paper
• Reducing food poverty by increasing agricultural sustainability in developing countries

  2003cited by this paper
• Response diversity, ecosystem change, and resilience

  2003cited by this paper
• Measuring farmers’ agroecological resistance after Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua: a case study in participatory, sustainable land management impact monitoring

  2002cited by this paper
• Understanding the Complexity of Economic, Ecological, and Social Systems

  2001cited by this paper
• Genetic diversity and disease control in rice

  2000cited by this paper
• Social and ecological resilience: are they related?

  2000cited by this paper
• Barriers and bridges to the renewal of ecosystems and institutions

  1997cited by this paper
• Rural Guatemala, 1760-1940

  1994cited by this paper
• The space of vulnerability: the causal structure of hunger and famine

  1993cited by this paper
• From Farming to Biotechnology: A Theory of Agro-Industrial Development

  1987cited by this paper
• Agroecology: The Scientific Basis Of Alternative Agriculture

  1987cited by this paper
• Agroecology : Ecological Processes in Sustainable Agriculture

  year unknowncited by this paper

• Collective autonomy of small-scale farmers and the shared responsibility of transitions to fairer and more just food systems

  2026cites this paper
• Political Economy of Neoliberal Climate Governance: Environmental Conservation and Agrarian Struggle in Gilgit Baltistan, Pakistan

  2025cites this paper
• Integrating indigenous knowledge and modernity for agroecological resilience in Nagaland

  2025cites this paper
• Sustainable circular strategies and short supply chains among smallholder producers: the case of Peru’s Agroferias Campesinas

  2025cites this paper
• The Ambiguous Ecologies of Agri‐Alternatives: Exploring the Calculus of Social Reproduction in Rural India

  2025cites this paper
• Cultivating Climate Precarity: Mechanisms of Surplus Capture and Immiserizing Growth in Guatemala's Horticultural Export Sector

  2025cites this paper
• Evaluating the impacts of environmental stresses on agriculture in the context of climate resilience

  2025cites this paper
• Challenging Agroecology—Promise and Pitfalls for Agrarian Studies

  2025cites this paper
• Agroecology and back-to-land migration in Turkey: asset or obstacle?

  2025cites this paper
• What good is agroecology? Predominant narratives about agroecology in Africa

  2025cites this paper
• The agroecological movement. A panoramic view

  2024cites this paper
• Food Systems Innovation to Nurture Equity and Resilience Globally (Food SINERGY): insights from the Food SINERGY network

  2024cites this paper
• Land struggles, livelihoods, and trajectories of agrarian change in the Polochic valley, Guatemala

  2024cites this paper
• The political economy of agroecological transitions: key analytical dimensions

  2024cites this paper
• It’s not just the farm: enterprise and household responses to the pandemic by North Carolina niche meat producers

  2024cites this paper
• Climate vulnerability of agroecological and conventional smallholders in Mvomero district, Tanzania: using mixed-methods to uncover local experiences and motivations of farming for the future

  2024cites this paper
• Local food system resilience in the context of shocks and crises: vulnerabilities and responses of agroecology-based farmers in Peru, Germany, and the United States

  2024influential citation
• Reflections on research agendas in agroecology: In search of a practical guide

  2024cites this paper
• Value created for small-scale farmers in an agroecology movement in the Eastern cape region of South Africa: an application of the value creation framework

  2024cites this paper
• Bottom-up attempts at agroecological transitions in China: The comparative cases of Sanliwan and Sanggang villages

  2023cites this paper
• Politically engaged, pluralist and internationalist: critical agrarian studies today

  2023cites this paper
• La Via Campesina – transforming agrarian and knowledge politics, and co-constructing a field: a laudatio

  2023cites this paper
• It wasn’t an intellectual construction: the founding of La Via Campesina, achievements and challenges – a conversation

  2023cites this paper
• Private finance for food system climate adaptation: opportunity or contradiction?

  2023cites this paper
• Hegemony, Quasi-Counterhegemony, and Counterhegemony in Pesticide Use in Latin America With Special Reference to Mexico

  2023cites this paper
• Contributions of a feminist perspective to the analysis of farm viability: the livelihoods reproduction framework

  2023influential citation
• Evidence of agroecology’s contribution to mitigation, adaptation, and resilience under climate variability and change in Latin America

  2023cites this paper
• Another palm is possible: small-scale palm oil farmers exercising autonomy in northeast Colombia

  2023influential citation
• Agroecology: Can it inform disaster risk management in fragile settings?

  2023cites this paper
• Shallow fixes and deep reasonings: framing sustainability at the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa)

  2023cites this paper
• “We grow earth”: performing eco-agrarian citizenship at the semi-periphery of Europe

  2023cites this paper
• Traditional agroecological knowledge and practices: The drivers and opportunities for adaptation actions in the northern region of Ghana

  2022cites this paper
• Impact of Zero Budget Natural Farming on Crop Yields in Andhra Pradesh, SE India

  2022cites this paper
• ‘With agroecology, we can defend ourselves’: examining campesino resilience and economic solidarity during pandemic-era economic shock in Guatemala

  2022cites this paper
• Climate Change, Food Security, and Health: Harnessing Agroecology to Build Climate-Resilient Communities

  2022cites this paper
• Uneven resilience and everyday adaptation: making Rwanda's green revolution ‘climate smart’

  2022cites this paper
• Between institutional reform and building popular movements: The political articulation of agroecology in Brazil

  2022cites this paper
• Beyond bad weather: climates of uncertainty in rural India

  2022cites this paper
• Interrogating Structural Conditions for Agricultural Production

  2022cites this paper
• The environmentalization of the agrarian question and the agrarianization of the climate justice movement

  2022cites this paper
• Degrowing alternative agriculture: institutions and aspirations as sustainability metrics for small farmers in Bosnia and India

  2022cites this paper
• Critical consciousness and resistance: Freirean reflections on the agroecology movement formation in Araponga, Minas Gerais, Brazil

  2022cites this paper
• Consciência crítica e resistência: reflexões Freirianas sobre a formação do movimento agroecológico em Araponga, Minas Gerais, Brasil

  2022cites this paper
• Ruptures in the agroecological transitions: institutional change and policy dismantling in Brazil

  2022cites this paper
• Amplifying Agroecological Farmer Lighthouses in Contested Territories: Navigating Historical Conditions and Forming New Clusters in Japan

  2021cites this paper
• Resilience in agro-ecological landscapes: process principles and outcome indicators

  2021cites this paper
• Achieving Food System Resilience Requires Challenging Dominant Land Property Regimes

  2021cites this paper
• 4. Networked climate sovereignties: linking agroecology, food sovereignty, and climate justice

  2021cites this paper
• From Human Smuggling to State Capture: Furthering Neoliberal Governance in North Africa

  2021cites this paper
• Narrow and Brittle or Broad and Nimble? Comparing Adaptive Capacity in Simplifying and Diversifying Farming Systems

  2021cites this paper
• Climate change and agrarian struggles: an invitation to contribute to a JPS Forum

  2021cites this paper
• Online Journal of Rural Research & Policy Online Journal of Rural Research & Policy

  year unknowncites this paper
• Rurality, Resilience, & Identity A Soft Systems Methodology Approach to Understanding Self-Reported Issues in Rural America

  year unknowncites this paper