Lídia Cabral
Biographic Data
| ID | 111075 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lídia Cabral |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lídia |
| FAMILY NAME | Cabral |
| SIGNATURE | CABRAL L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sussex |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0311-4607 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 89 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 23 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Transformational Agroecology
Agroecology is increasingly seen to have the potential to transform agriculture towards sustainability and social justice. Recent studies have highlighted different characteristics and principles of such transformative agroecology. Scholars have also shown that agroecology practices can be scaled up to achieve broader transformation. However, the process of systematising approaches to transformative agroecology often creates a static vision of tr…
Reclaiming the Cerrado – A Territorial Account of a Disputed Frontier
As global agri-food systems come under increasing stress, debates on their future have become highly polarised, exposing fundamental differences in understandings and priorities: industrial production versus traditional rights; short-term yields versus longer-term sustainability; cheap versus healthy food. Brazil is at the core of these debates, with the Cerrado being centre stage since the soybean-powered Green Revolution. Accompanied by defores…
Participatory action research in neoliberal academia
Participatory action research (PAR) is described in the literature as a valuable method for enhancing the power of marginalized individuals and communities by collectively producing knowledge to transform the inequalities they experience. This deviates from most social science research, where such actors are largely the subjects of data extraction. This paper reports on our experience of using PAR to examine existing food systems and ideas regard…
Just food transitions
In this paper we apply the concept of just transition to food systems, a domain central to environmental sustainability and social justice. We broaden and democratise the just transition debate by foregrounding a new set of voices and experiences from civil society organisations and networks in Brazil, Sierra Leone, the United Kingdom, and Zambia. We analyse the understandings of just food system transition as voiced in participatory exchanges be…
Fringe heroines
Feminist scholarship regards the Western scientific revolution and twentieth-century agricultural modernization as patriarchal endeavors and technoscientific regimes as entangled in societal interests and politics. In this article, I engage with these perspectives by focusing on women scientists working in Brazil’s leading agricultural sciences organization, Embrapa. My analysis draws on life history interviews with three women, juxtaposing their…
Introduction
As global agri-food systems come under increasing stress, debates on their future have become highly polarised, exposing fundamental differences in understandings and priorities: industrial production versus traditional rights; short-term yields versus longer-term sustainability; cheap versus healthy food. Brazil is at the core of these debates, with the Cerrado being centre stage since the soybean-powered Green Revolution. Accompanied by defores…
Glossary
This is the glossary for IDS Bulletin 54.1: Frontier Territories: Countering the Green Revolution Legacy in the Brazilian Cerrado
Introdução
À medida que os sistemas agroalimentares globais estão sob crescente tensão, os debates sobre o seu futuro tornaram-se altamente polarizados, expondo diferenças fundamentais nos entendimentos e prioridades: produção industrial versus direitos tradicionais; rendimentos a curto prazo versus sustentabilidade a longo prazo; alimentos baratos versus alimentos saudáveis. O Brasil está no centro desses debates, sendo o Cerrado o centro das atenções desd…
Brazilian Civil Society and South–South Cooperation
Having transformed its hinterland to become a major exporter of agricultural commodities, Brazil has, since the mid-2000s, set up a range of South–South cooperation (SSC) initiatives to export its agri-food policies and technologies to othe countries, mainly in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Both the domestic agricultural policies and SSC have been scrutinised and shaped by interactions with civil society actors, from peasant associations …
Tractors, states, markets and agrarian change in Africa
Mechanisation has made a comeback to agricultural policy in Africa, encouraging scholars to revisit seminal literature on induced innovation. Recent studies emphasise the role for markets in addressing Africa's mechanisation gaps and warn about past government failures to be avoided. The trust in the ability of markets to offer optimal solutions is debatable. Markets are shaped, as states are, by the interests of their most powerful players. A hi…
Embrapa and the construction of scientific heritage in Brazilian agriculture
Epic narratives of the Green Revolution in Brazil, China, and India
The Green Revolution is often seen as epitomising the dawn of scientific and technological advancement and modernity in the agricultural sector across developing countries, a process that unfolded from the 1940s through to the 1980s. Despite the time that has elapsed, this episode of the past continues to resonate today, and still shapes the institutions and practices of agricultural science and technology. In Brazil, China, and India, narratives…
Of zinc roofs and mango trees
This paper reviews the latest mechanisation programme by the Mozambican government, asking how it is politically driven and how it shapes and is shaped by agrarian structures. Old ideas about agrarian dualism are reproduced today, albeit with a new language of public-private partnerships that are seen as potentially driving the modernisation of the peasantry. State-sponsored and privately-run service centres, featuring zinc roofed warehouses, are…
Selective Learning
This article analyses the interaction between China and the CGIAR (formerly the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) since the 1970s, exploring the formation of China’s modern agricultural science capability and its approach towards learning. While China was previously regarded and treated as a recipient of international scientific expertise, it is now a more equal partner and contributor, with capacity to provide funds, sup…
Food politics and development
Food has become both a pivotal topic in development and a lens through which to integrate and address a range of contemporary global challenges. This review article addresses in particular the interrelationship between food and sustainable, equitable development, arguing that this is fundamentally political. We offer a set of approaches to understanding food politics, each underlain by broader theoretical traditions in power analysis, focused res…
Perspectives on the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation
The establishment of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation (GPEDC) created the unique opportunity to bring together and explore synergies between South–South cooperation (SSC) and traditional aid, or North–South cooperation. However, the GPEDC lacks support from both sides due to a lack of trust and misconceptions among partner countries. This article discusses the challenges of operationalising the GPEDC as a truly global…
Priests, Technicians and Traders? The Discursive Politics of Brazil's Agricultural Cooperation in Mozambique/ Sacerdotes, Técnicos E Investidores? A Política Discursiva Da Cooperação Agrícola Brasilei…
This paper is situated in an emerging body on Brazilian development cooperation, looking at the specific case of cooperation concerning agricultural development in Africa. The analysis highlights the discursive side of Brazilian cooperation, where competing narratives about models and purposes construct different versions of reality for reasons related to the political character of cooperation. Discourse is hence an expression of the political. T…
Brazil’s Tropical Solutions for Africa
Brazil’s Agricultural Politics in Africa
Brazil’s influence in agricultural development in Africa has become noticeable in recent years. South–South cooperation is one of the instruments for engagement, and affinities between Brazil and African countries are invoked to justify the transfer of technology and public policies. In this article, we take the case of one of Brazil’s development cooperation programs, More Food International (MFI), to illustrate why policy concepts and ideas tha…
Brazil-Africa technical cooperation in health
BACKGROUND: Brazil is rapidly becoming an influential player in development cooperation, also thanks to its high-visibility health projects in Africa and Latin America. The 4th High-level Forum on Aid Effectiveness held in Busan in late 2011 marked a change in the way development cooperation is conceptualised. The present paper explores the issue of emerging donors' contribution to the post-Busan debate on aid effectiveness by looking at Brazil's…
New Development Encounters
There is currently much talk of the role of the ‘rising powers’ in Africa, and whether their engagements represent a ‘new paradigm’ in development cooperation. This article introduces this IDS Bulletin and examines Brazilian and Chinese agricultural development cooperation in Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. A wide variety of forms of support are seen, involving different financial modalities, including aid, concessional loans, trade dea…
Brazil-Africa Agricultural Cooperation Encounters
Brazilian development cooperation is increasingly in the spotlight. Africa is a major destination and agriculture tops the list of priority fields on intervention, with Embrapa leading cooperation projects. But patterns of cooperation in Africa are changing as other public, private and civil society actors enter the realm of cooperation and bring along contrasting narratives and experiences of agricultural development. This article maps the evolv…
Brazil and China in Mozambican Agriculture
Mozambique, a country undergoing rapid transformations driven by the recent discovery of mineral resources, is one of the top destinations of Chinese and Brazilian cooperation and investment in Africa. This article provides an account of the policies, narratives, operational modalities and underlying motivations of Brazilian and Chinese development cooperation in Mozambique. It is particularly interested in understanding how the engagements are p…
Food politics and development
Food has become both a pivotal topic in development and a lens through which to integrate and address a range of contemporary global challenges. This review article addresses in particular the interrelationship between food and sustainable, equitable development, arguing that this is fundamentally political. We offer a set of approaches to understanding food politics, each underlain by broader theoretical traditions in power analysis, focused res…
Brazil’s Agricultural Politics in Africa
Brazil’s influence in agricultural development in Africa has become noticeable in recent years. South–South cooperation is one of the instruments for engagement, and affinities between Brazil and African countries are invoked to justify the transfer of technology and public policies. In this article, we take the case of one of Brazil’s development cooperation programs, More Food International (MFI), to illustrate why policy concepts and ideas tha…
Epic narratives of the Green Revolution in Brazil, China, and India
The Green Revolution is often seen as epitomising the dawn of scientific and technological advancement and modernity in the agricultural sector across developing countries, a process that unfolded from the 1940s through to the 1980s. Despite the time that has elapsed, this episode of the past continues to resonate today, and still shapes the institutions and practices of agricultural science and technology. In Brazil, China, and India, narratives…
New Development Encounters
There is currently much talk of the role of the ‘rising powers’ in Africa, and whether their engagements represent a ‘new paradigm’ in development cooperation. This article introduces this IDS Bulletin and examines Brazilian and Chinese agricultural development cooperation in Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. A wide variety of forms of support are seen, involving different financial modalities, including aid, concessional loans, trade dea…
Brazil and China in Mozambican Agriculture
Mozambique, a country undergoing rapid transformations driven by the recent discovery of mineral resources, is one of the top destinations of Chinese and Brazilian cooperation and investment in Africa. This article provides an account of the policies, narratives, operational modalities and underlying motivations of Brazilian and Chinese development cooperation in Mozambique. It is particularly interested in understanding how the engagements are p…
Tractors, states, markets and agrarian change in Africa
Mechanisation has made a comeback to agricultural policy in Africa, encouraging scholars to revisit seminal literature on induced innovation. Recent studies emphasise the role for markets in addressing Africa's mechanisation gaps and warn about past government failures to be avoided. The trust in the ability of markets to offer optimal solutions is debatable. Markets are shaped, as states are, by the interests of their most powerful players. A hi…
Brazil’s Tropical Solutions for Africa
Brazil-Africa Agricultural Cooperation Encounters
Brazilian development cooperation is increasingly in the spotlight. Africa is a major destination and agriculture tops the list of priority fields on intervention, with Embrapa leading cooperation projects. But patterns of cooperation in Africa are changing as other public, private and civil society actors enter the realm of cooperation and bring along contrasting narratives and experiences of agricultural development. This article maps the evolv…
Participatory action research in neoliberal academia
Participatory action research (PAR) is described in the literature as a valuable method for enhancing the power of marginalized individuals and communities by collectively producing knowledge to transform the inequalities they experience. This deviates from most social science research, where such actors are largely the subjects of data extraction. This paper reports on our experience of using PAR to examine existing food systems and ideas regard…
Introduction
As global agri-food systems come under increasing stress, debates on their future have become highly polarised, exposing fundamental differences in understandings and priorities: industrial production versus traditional rights; short-term yields versus longer-term sustainability; cheap versus healthy food. Brazil is at the core of these debates, with the Cerrado being centre stage since the soybean-powered Green Revolution. Accompanied by defores…
Just food transitions
In this paper we apply the concept of just transition to food systems, a domain central to environmental sustainability and social justice. We broaden and democratise the just transition debate by foregrounding a new set of voices and experiences from civil society organisations and networks in Brazil, Sierra Leone, the United Kingdom, and Zambia. We analyse the understandings of just food system transition as voiced in participatory exchanges be…
Of zinc roofs and mango trees
This paper reviews the latest mechanisation programme by the Mozambican government, asking how it is politically driven and how it shapes and is shaped by agrarian structures. Old ideas about agrarian dualism are reproduced today, albeit with a new language of public-private partnerships that are seen as potentially driving the modernisation of the peasantry. State-sponsored and privately-run service centres, featuring zinc roofed warehouses, are…
Perspectives on the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation
The establishment of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation (GPEDC) created the unique opportunity to bring together and explore synergies between South–South cooperation (SSC) and traditional aid, or North–South cooperation. However, the GPEDC lacks support from both sides due to a lack of trust and misconceptions among partner countries. This article discusses the challenges of operationalising the GPEDC as a truly global…
Brazil-Africa technical cooperation in health
BACKGROUND: Brazil is rapidly becoming an influential player in development cooperation, also thanks to its high-visibility health projects in Africa and Latin America. The 4th High-level Forum on Aid Effectiveness held in Busan in late 2011 marked a change in the way development cooperation is conceptualised. The present paper explores the issue of emerging donors' contribution to the post-Busan debate on aid effectiveness by looking at Brazil's…
New Development Encounters
There is currently much talk of the role of the ‘rising powers’ in Africa, and whether their engagements represent a ‘new paradigm’ in development cooperation. This article introduces this IDS Bulletin and examines Brazilian and Chinese agricultural development cooperation in Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. A wide variety of forms of support are seen, involving different financial modalities, including aid, concessional loans, trade dea…
Brazil-Africa Agricultural Cooperation Encounters
Brazilian development cooperation is increasingly in the spotlight. Africa is a major destination and agriculture tops the list of priority fields on intervention, with Embrapa leading cooperation projects. But patterns of cooperation in Africa are changing as other public, private and civil society actors enter the realm of cooperation and bring along contrasting narratives and experiences of agricultural development. This article maps the evolv…
Brazil and China in Mozambican Agriculture
Mozambique, a country undergoing rapid transformations driven by the recent discovery of mineral resources, is one of the top destinations of Chinese and Brazilian cooperation and investment in Africa. This article provides an account of the policies, narratives, operational modalities and underlying motivations of Brazilian and Chinese development cooperation in Mozambique. It is particularly interested in understanding how the engagements are p…
Brazil’s Tropical Solutions for Africa
Brazil’s Agricultural Politics in Africa
Brazil’s influence in agricultural development in Africa has become noticeable in recent years. South–South cooperation is one of the instruments for engagement, and affinities between Brazil and African countries are invoked to justify the transfer of technology and public policies. In this article, we take the case of one of Brazil’s development cooperation programs, More Food International (MFI), to illustrate why policy concepts and ideas tha…
Priests, Technicians and Traders? The Discursive Politics of Brazil's Agricultural Cooperation in Mozambique/ Sacerdotes, Técnicos E Investidores? A Política Discursiva Da Cooperação Agrícola Brasilei…
This paper is situated in an emerging body on Brazilian development cooperation, looking at the specific case of cooperation concerning agricultural development in Africa. The analysis highlights the discursive side of Brazilian cooperation, where competing narratives about models and purposes construct different versions of reality for reasons related to the political character of cooperation. Discourse is hence an expression of the political. T…
Perspectives on the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation
The establishment of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation (GPEDC) created the unique opportunity to bring together and explore synergies between South–South cooperation (SSC) and traditional aid, or North–South cooperation. However, the GPEDC lacks support from both sides due to a lack of trust and misconceptions among partner countries. This article discusses the challenges of operationalising the GPEDC as a truly global…
Food politics and development
Food has become both a pivotal topic in development and a lens through which to integrate and address a range of contemporary global challenges. This review article addresses in particular the interrelationship between food and sustainable, equitable development, arguing that this is fundamentally political. We offer a set of approaches to understanding food politics, each underlain by broader theoretical traditions in power analysis, focused res…
Embrapa and the construction of scientific heritage in Brazilian agriculture
Epic narratives of the Green Revolution in Brazil, China, and India
The Green Revolution is often seen as epitomising the dawn of scientific and technological advancement and modernity in the agricultural sector across developing countries, a process that unfolded from the 1940s through to the 1980s. Despite the time that has elapsed, this episode of the past continues to resonate today, and still shapes the institutions and practices of agricultural science and technology. In Brazil, China, and India, narratives…
Of zinc roofs and mango trees
This paper reviews the latest mechanisation programme by the Mozambican government, asking how it is politically driven and how it shapes and is shaped by agrarian structures. Old ideas about agrarian dualism are reproduced today, albeit with a new language of public-private partnerships that are seen as potentially driving the modernisation of the peasantry. State-sponsored and privately-run service centres, featuring zinc roofed warehouses, are…
Selective Learning
This article analyses the interaction between China and the CGIAR (formerly the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) since the 1970s, exploring the formation of China’s modern agricultural science capability and its approach towards learning. While China was previously regarded and treated as a recipient of international scientific expertise, it is now a more equal partner and contributor, with capacity to provide funds, sup…
Tractors, states, markets and agrarian change in Africa
Mechanisation has made a comeback to agricultural policy in Africa, encouraging scholars to revisit seminal literature on induced innovation. Recent studies emphasise the role for markets in addressing Africa's mechanisation gaps and warn about past government failures to be avoided. The trust in the ability of markets to offer optimal solutions is debatable. Markets are shaped, as states are, by the interests of their most powerful players. A hi…
Fringe heroines
Feminist scholarship regards the Western scientific revolution and twentieth-century agricultural modernization as patriarchal endeavors and technoscientific regimes as entangled in societal interests and politics. In this article, I engage with these perspectives by focusing on women scientists working in Brazil’s leading agricultural sciences organization, Embrapa. My analysis draws on life history interviews with three women, juxtaposing their…
Introduction
As global agri-food systems come under increasing stress, debates on their future have become highly polarised, exposing fundamental differences in understandings and priorities: industrial production versus traditional rights; short-term yields versus longer-term sustainability; cheap versus healthy food. Brazil is at the core of these debates, with the Cerrado being centre stage since the soybean-powered Green Revolution. Accompanied by defores…
Glossary
This is the glossary for IDS Bulletin 54.1: Frontier Territories: Countering the Green Revolution Legacy in the Brazilian Cerrado
Introdução
À medida que os sistemas agroalimentares globais estão sob crescente tensão, os debates sobre o seu futuro tornaram-se altamente polarizados, expondo diferenças fundamentais nos entendimentos e prioridades: produção industrial versus direitos tradicionais; rendimentos a curto prazo versus sustentabilidade a longo prazo; alimentos baratos versus alimentos saudáveis. O Brasil está no centro desses debates, sendo o Cerrado o centro das atenções desd…
Brazilian Civil Society and South–South Cooperation
Having transformed its hinterland to become a major exporter of agricultural commodities, Brazil has, since the mid-2000s, set up a range of South–South cooperation (SSC) initiatives to export its agri-food policies and technologies to othe countries, mainly in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Both the domestic agricultural policies and SSC have been scrutinised and shaped by interactions with civil society actors, from peasant associations …
Transformational Agroecology
Agroecology is increasingly seen to have the potential to transform agriculture towards sustainability and social justice. Recent studies have highlighted different characteristics and principles of such transformative agroecology. Scholars have also shown that agroecology practices can be scaled up to achieve broader transformation. However, the process of systematising approaches to transformative agroecology often creates a static vision of tr…
Reclaiming the Cerrado – A Territorial Account of a Disputed Frontier
As global agri-food systems come under increasing stress, debates on their future have become highly polarised, exposing fundamental differences in understandings and priorities: industrial production versus traditional rights; short-term yields versus longer-term sustainability; cheap versus healthy food. Brazil is at the core of these debates, with the Cerrado being centre stage since the soybean-powered Green Revolution. Accompanied by defores…
Participatory action research in neoliberal academia
Participatory action research (PAR) is described in the literature as a valuable method for enhancing the power of marginalized individuals and communities by collectively producing knowledge to transform the inequalities they experience. This deviates from most social science research, where such actors are largely the subjects of data extraction. This paper reports on our experience of using PAR to examine existing food systems and ideas regard…
Just food transitions
In this paper we apply the concept of just transition to food systems, a domain central to environmental sustainability and social justice. We broaden and democratise the just transition debate by foregrounding a new set of voices and experiences from civil society organisations and networks in Brazil, Sierra Leone, the United Kingdom, and Zambia. We analyse the understandings of just food system transition as voiced in participatory exchanges be…
Political science (23 works) · Geography (18 works) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (16 works) · Economics (15 works) · Agriculture (13 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Economic growth (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · International Development and Aid (7 works)