Seed healers: between empowerment and strategic essentialism

Abstract

Women's networks of central-south Chile have taken the challenge of caring for native seeds against the homogenizing and predator agri-food regime. To do so, they declare themselves as reproducers of life, and privileged keepers of agrobiodiversity, from a strongly essentialist language. Is it really an empowering choice? What costs and possibilities does this essentialism involve? We believe it is possible to state that the essentialism represented by the seed healers is not only politically strategic, but contraessentialist in its results, contributing significantly to deconstruct traditional sex roles and hegemonic developmentalism

Peasant feminism; Seeds; Essentialism