Geography 722 Social Geography: Nature and Society
Tad Mutersbaugh / office 1331 POT; Phone 7-1316office hrs.
Students from all disciplines are invited to an exploration of the burgeoning literature on agrarian landscapes, consumption and nature. The theoretical standpoint will located at an intersection of poststructuralism, Marxist political economy, and culture theory; the methodological framing — while not wanting to draw too fine a distinction between method and theory —predominantly ethnographic.
Beginning with recent ‘global’ ethnographies that frame differing experiences of modernity, the course charts a series of transitions in the social character of nature, agriculture and food, Are indigenous peoples, women, and peasants the triumphant participants that won the Mexican, Vietnamese (or American), and Angolan wars? Or are they hybridized, transnational ‘polybien’ migrants transgressing urban and rural milieus in multiple locales and countries? Were do we begin the study of nature and society? In the rural sphere, or with urban consumers? And how are consumers to be defined? As ‘final consumers’ of food/nature? As agri-businesses? As transnational food corporations? Questions of identity and culture will figure prominently in our examination of contemporary ethnographies.
With considerations of people and place in mind, the course will take up ‘classic’ agrarian questions via a review of the classic agrarian debates that raged after the Russian Revolution. Then the course will turn to contemporary agrarian questions such as food globalization and the diverse productionist and regulatory dynamics through which industrialized nations and corporations seek to define and control food and agriculture. These ‘global food’ dynamics include various forms of intensification, new plantation economies, and contract farming. Along with the globalization of commodity flows from corn to bananas and coffee, we also see movement of industries to rural areas in order to make use of the relatively cheaper labor located there.
Last but not least, a focus on the ‘consumer turn,’ i.e., ways in which consumption shapes nature-society relations, will bring in poststructuralist and feminist approaches to culture and agriculture. These works have triggered a theoretical revitalization of rural studies, leveraging new studies of biotechnology, regulation, standardization (of everything), nature and beauty, certified products, environmental degradation, and environmental social movements to name but a few areas.
In addition, we will take up social theoretical material that underpins contemporary investigations of nature, food and agriculture. These may include studies by Polanyi, Marx, Haraway, Kautsky, Foucault, Butler, Gramsci, R. Williams, Bakhtin, and/or Scott: selection will be based on the interests of seminar participants.
Suggested Readings (final selection guided by student interest)
Rural Identities: Rural Bodies, Nature, Consciousness
Chari S, 2003, Marxism, sarcasm, ethnography: geographical fieldnotes from South India Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 24(2):169-183
Mountz, A. and R. A. Wright. (1996). Daily life in the transnational migrant community of San Agustín, Oaxaca, and Poughkeepsie, New York. Diaspora, 5(3), 403-428.
Domosh M, 2003, Pickles and purity: discourse of food, empire, and work in turn-of-the-century USA Social and Cultural Geography 4(1): 7-26
William Roseberry, “The Cultural History of Peasantries” in Schneider and Rapp eds. Articulating Hidden Histories: Exploring the Influence of Eric Wolf, California, 1995, pp. 51-66.
Kearney, Michael. 1996, Reconceptualizing the peasantry :anthropology in global perspective Boulder: Westview Press, Excerpts
Berger, John. Pig Earth
Nancy Scheper-Hughes: ‘Everyday Violence: bodies, death and silence’ In Development Studies: a reader ed. Stuart Corbridge Arnold, New York. Pp. 427-437.
Bassett TJ , 2003, Dangerous pursuits: Hunter associations (donzo ton) and national politics in Cote d'Ivoire AFRICA 73 (1): 1-30
Political Ecology
Bassett TJ , Zueli KB, 2000, Environmental discourses and the Ivorian Savanna Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90 (1): 67-95
Zimmerer. 'Soil Erosion and Labor Shortages in the Andes …’
Netting, Robert McC. Smallholders, householders : farm families and the ecology of intensive, sustainable agriculture Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 1993.
Hecht, Susanna. 'Environment, Development and Politics: Capital Accumulation and the Livestock Sector in Eastern Amazonia' World Development V 13 #6 pp. 663-684.
Robbins P, Robbins. 2001. "Fixed Categories in a Portable Landscape: The Causes and Consequences of Land Cover Categorization" Environment and Planning A. 33(1): 161-179.
Robbins and Sharp. 2003. "Producing and Consuming Chemicals: The Moral Economy of the American Lawn" Economic Geography 79(4): 425-451.
Indigenous and Peasant Revolution and Resistance
Nash, June. The fiesta of the word: the Zapatista uprising and radical democracy in Mexico. American Anthropologist v. 99 (June '97) p. 261-74
Womack, John Jr. 1999. Rebellion in Chiapas Excerpts
Karl Marx, “Peasantry as a class,” abstracted from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Selected Works, Progress Publishers, pp. 331-337.
Moore, Barrington (1966), “The peasants and revolution” from Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, pp. 453-460; 467-471; 479-483.
Scott, James C. 1985. Everyday Peasant Resistance in SE Asia Chapter 2.
Zapatista Web Site:
Women, Labor, Voice and Exit
Freidberg, S. 2001. To Garden, To Market: Gendered meanings of work on an African urban periphery Gender, Place and Culture 8(1):5-24.
Carney, Judith and Michael Watts. 1991. 'Disciplining Women? Rice, Mechanization, and the evolution of Mandinka gender relations in Senegambia' Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society V16(4) pp. 651-681.
Fortmann, L.. 1996. Gendered Knowledge: Rights and Space in Two Zimbabwe Villages. In Feminist Political Ecology : global issues and local experiences , ed. D. Rocheleau, B. Thomas-Slayter, and E. Wangari. London: Routledge.
Hart. Engendering Everyday Resistance: Gender, Patronage and Production Politics in Rural Malaysia
Stephen, Lynn. 1993. Weaving in the Fast Lane: Class, Ethnicity, and Gender in Zapotec Craft Commercialization' In June Nash, ed., Crafts in the World Market (Albany: SUNY Press) p.25-57
ReNaturalizing Marxism: Theoretical Backdrop
Foucault Birth of the Clinic,
Williams, R. Marxism and Literature, The country and the city
Gramsci, A. 1979. Selections from Prison Notebooks, The Southern Question
The Agrarian Question: Classic debates: Chayanov, Lenin, Kautsky
A. V. Chayanov, The Theory of Peasant Economy, Wisconsin, 1986 (1966), pp. 53-117, 242-269 and introduction by Teodor Shanin, pp. 1-24.
V. I. Lenin, Development of Capitalism in Russia, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1974 (1956), pp. 37-43, 71-86, 218-221, 314-334 and “The differentiation of the peasantry” from J. Harriss ed., Rural Development, 1982, pp. 130-137.
Karl Kautsky, The Agrarian Question, Volume 1, Zwan Press, London, 1988, pp. 13-19, 95-197.
Contemporary Agrarian Questions
Watts, Michael and David Goodman. ‘Agrarian Questions: Global Appetite... In Globalising Food
Marsden, Terry. ‘Creating Space for Food’ In Globalising Food
Samatar. 1993. 'Structural Adjustment as Development Strategy? Bananas, Boom and Poverty in Somalia'
de Janvry, Alain. 1981. The Agrarian Question in Latin America Excerpt on land redistribution types. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.
Managing Nature: States, Banks, Communities
Scott, J. Seeing Like a State
Polanyi K, 1944, The Great Transformation (excerpts).
Agrawal, A. and Gibson, C.C. 1999 Enchantment and Disenchantment: The role of community in natural resource conservation. World Development , Vol. 27, NO. 4, pp. 629-649.
Rangan, R 1997 ‘Property vs Control: The State and Forest Management in the Indian Himalaya’, Development and Change , 28, 1 pp 71-94
Sneddon, C.S. 2000 “Sustainability” in Ecological Economics, Ecology and Livelihoods: A Review, Progress in Human Geography (Vol. 24, no. 4), pp. 521-549.
Wade, R. 1997. Greening the Bank: the struggle over the Environment 1970-1995
A Question of Taste? Food, Economy of Qualities and the Consumer Turn
Callon M, Meadel C, Rabeharisoa V,2002, The economy of qualities ECONOMY AND SOCIETY 31(2): 194- 217
Fine, B, 2003,Callonistics: a disentanglement ECONOMY AND SOCIETY 32(3): 478-484
Miller D, 2002, Turning Callon the right way up ECONOMY AND SOCIETY 31(2):218- 233
Goodman D, 2003, The quality ‘turn’ and alternative food practices: reflections and agenda Journal of Rural Studies 19: 1-7
Whatmore S, Stassart P, Renting H, 2003, What's alternative about alternative food networks? ENVIRONMENT AND PLANNING A 35(3): 389- 391
Stassart P, Whatmore SJ, 2003,Metabolising risk: food scares and the un/re-making of Belgian beef ENVIRONMENT AND PLANNING A 35(3): 449- 462
Fast Food Nation: Conditions of Consumption in the First World
Fast Food Nation
Leidner, R. 1993. Except from Fast Food, Fast Talk
Capital Concentration in Global Food Systems
Goodman, M and M. Redclift ‘Food into Freezers, Women into Factories’ In Refashioning Nature
Marsden, T. 2000. Retailing, Regulation and Consumption
Pollet, M. 2000. ‘The Organic-Industrial Complex’.
Kaplinsky, R. 2000. Globalization and unequalization: what can be learned from value chain analysis Journal of Development Studies 37 17-146
Organics, Fair Trade & Politics in Transnational Perspective
Mutersbaugh, T. 2002. ‘The Number Is The Beast’ Environment and Planning A
Nigh, R. and Hernandez Castillo: Organic Coffee and Mam indigenous producers
Whatmore and Thorne: Coffee networks IN Globalising Food
Raynolds LT, 2002, Consumer/Producer Links in Fair Trade coffee networks Sociologia Ruralis 42(4): 404-424
Mitchelsen, 2001,
Consumer-Producer relations in nature networks
Castree N, 2002, False antitheses? Marxism, nature and actor-networks ANTIPODE 34(1): 111- 146
Buller, H, Morris, C, 2003,Farm animal welfare: A new repertoire of nature-society relations or modernism re-embedded? SOCIOLOGIA RURALIS 43(3): 216-238
Lockie S, 2002, 'The invisible mouth: Mobilizing 'the consumer' in food production-consumption networks SOCIOLOGIA RURALIS 42(4): 278-296
Mansfield B, 2003, Fish, factory trawlers, and imitation crab: the nature of quality in the seafood industry JOURNAL OF RURAL STUDIES19(1): 9-21
Freidberg SE, 2003, Culture, converntions and colonial constructs of rurality in south-north horticultural trades Journal of Rural Studies 19: 97-109
Wilkinson J, 2002, The final foods industry and the changing face of the global agro-food system Sociologia Ruralis 42(4):329-346
Barham E, 2003, Translating terroir: the global challenge of French AOC labeling Journal of Rural Studies 19:127-138
Gouveia L, Aurnas J, 2002, Taming nature, taming workers: constructing the separation between meat consumption and meat production in the US Sociologia Rurlais 42(4): 370-390