Abstract
In the last decade, Peru has become one of the largest export producers of blueberries. Blueberry agribusiness has been portrayed as a miracle since it has brought economic growth and created job postings in a context dominated by the informal economy.
Nonetheless, agribusiness and its legal framework also face contestation. Agricultural workers and academics critique agribusiness, highlighting neoliberalism and its effects —the weakening labour rights, the liberalization of land markets and State transformation (marketization)— as one of the causes of contestation.
Against this background, the presentation will highlight how the agribusiness legal framework and its transnational nature resembles the agrarian capitalism of sugar cane and cotton in the republican Peru of the early XXth century. It will highlight how the legal framework of blueberry agribusiness results from a long-standing relationship between law and the political economy of agrarian capitalism in Peru that creates poverty and exclusion.
The presentation invites us to critically discuss the legal approaches to law and political economy that focus on contesting neoliberalism and the "neoliberal legalities", disregarding the pervasive nature of capitalism as the primary cause of the exclusionary effects of the legal framework supporting agribusiness. Moreover, the presentation will be an opportunity to discuss the law and its function as a tool of change in global capitalism.
Natalia Torres Zuniga is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, University of Oslo. Natalia works on questions of law and political economy, agrarian capitalism and constitutional law in the Andes and international human rights law.
She has published on the legitimacy of the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights, critical legal theory and the critique of ideology.
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