From guineapigs to prickly pears: Visualising food practices as resistance in women’s anti-extractives activism in the Peruvian Andes

In this paper I critically explore the ways in which food is deployed as an emblematic form of everyday gendered resistance in contestations over extractives-led development. Drawing on photos and interviews from participatory photography research with women anti-mining activists in Northern Peru, the paper argues that women activists harness imagery of everyday practices associated with food cultivation, preparation, and consumption as an evocative means of advocating for more just, hopeful, and sustainable development futures, in the context of living with large scale mining. The way that grassroots women activists place food at the centre of their visions of Development alternatives, reveals the intersections between food sovereignty, gender, and the impetus to decolonise development, which together underpin their continued resistance to extractivism.