Quiet Social Movements for Agroecology and Food Sovereignty: Gender, Ethnicity, and Environmental Health in China

• In Event: Political Ecology (Co-sponsored by Environmental Sociology Section)

Abstract

Are there social movements in places where authoritarian states leave little space for autonomous civil society? If so, what do they look like? Most sociological theory on social movements derives from Euro-American cases characterized by confrontational collective action and rights-based claims on the state. Drawing on long-term ethnography conducted from 2014 to 2025, this paper argues that informal networks and initiatives cultivating food sovereignty and agroecology in China constitute “quiet social movements”, intentionally depoliticized efforts that transform agricultural and food production practices through everyday life rather than political confrontation. The paper centers on Gu village in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, where a female village cadre and CCP member led the transformation of an ethnic minority cultural cooperative into an economic cooperative for organic vegetable production, primarily benefiting “left behind” elderly women. Comparing this case with a male-led, profit-driven cooperative in Henan that devolved into greenwashing, the paper shows how gendered and ethnic marginalization paradoxically enabled the most committed agroecological practices. Drawing on feminist political ecology, theories of everyday resistance in the Global South, and Polanyian political economy, the paper theorizes how these “rooted networks” operate under authoritarian conditions by strategically incorporating, rather than opposing, state discourses of ecological civilization, rural vitalization, and poverty alleviation. The paper makes three contributions to political ecology: it reveals how commodification renders peasant agroecological knowledge invisible even within alternative food networks; it demonstrates how gender and ethnicity shape environmental countermovements; and it expands our sociological understanding of how socio-ecological change unfolds in authoritarian environments. This understanding is especially urgent as authoritarian shifts reshape conditions for social movements worldwide.

Author

• Li Zhang, Amherst College