Vol. 16 No. 32 (2025): Communities and possible worlds. Community experiences and practices of resistance in neoliberal rationality
Articles

From Procurement to Food Justice: Colombia’s Institutional Turn

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  • Lucia Picarella,
  • Patrizia La Trecchia
Lucia Picarella
Department of Social Science, University of Foggia, Italy
Bio
Patrizia La Trecchia
Environmental Humanities Initiative, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA
Bio
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/smp-16156

Published 2025-12-30

Keywords

  • Resistance,
  • Colombia,
  • Food Security,
  • Food Sovereignty,
  • Government Agencies

How to Cite

Picarella, L., & La Trecchia, P. (2025). From Procurement to Food Justice: Colombia’s Institutional Turn. SocietàMutamentoPolitica, 16(32), 109–117. https://doi.org/10.36253/smp-16156

Copyright (c) 2025 Lucia Picarella, Patrizia La Trecchia

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

This article analyzes the case of the Colombian Government Agency Colombia Compra Eficiente as an example of an institutional innovation that actively challenges neoliberal rationality in the fight against hunger. It argues that, through targeted strategies, the agency is transformed into a community of resistance to the dominant capitalist paradigm, thus serving as a vehicle for the democratization and institutionalization of practices traditionally associated with grassroots social movements. By examining two key strategies – Ruta de la Democratización and Mi Mercado Popular – the article demonstrates how the agency disrupts conventional dichotomies between state and civil society in food sovereignty scholarship, suggesting that institutional actors can play a pivotal role in reorienting local development models toward social and food justice goals.

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