Amy Trauger

‘Because they can do the work’: women farmers in sustainable agriculture in Pennsylvania, USA

Women throughout the West are up to three times more likely to be the operator of a farm in sustainable agricultural models than in productivist models. When women assume the role of farmer they transgress traditional gender identities on farms, which dictate that women are ‘farmwives’ and men are ‘farmers’; these gender identities intersect with spaces in the agricultural community to imply appropriate behavior for women as farmwives. This research demonstrates that the sustainable agriculture community provides spaces that promote and are compatible with womens identities as farmers. Feminist analyses of space and agriculture suggest that productivist agricultural models marginalize women from spaces of knowledge, while sustainable agriculture provides spaces of empowerment for women farmers. The fieldwork for this project involved a purposive survey, in‐depth interviews and participant observation with twenty women farmers over an 18‐month period in the sustainable agriculture community of Central Pennsylvania.

Is Bigger Better? The Small Farm Imaginary and Fair Trade Banana Production in the Dominican Republic

Fair Trade is a certification system designed to create social change in production and consumption patterns, primarily in agricultural products, by shaping what happens on the production end of the supply chain through a certification and regulatory system. Previous research on Fair Trade investigated the workings and benefits of Fair Trade production models, with little attention paid to how the Fair Trade model might fail to meet its objectives. Research on Fair Trade would suggest that if inequality and exploitation exist in the Fair Trade supply chain, it would be experienced by the most marginalized actors, such as the temporary workers hired by smallhold farmers, who are frequently invisible in the Fair Trade literature and documents on banana production in the Caribbean. Through a global ethnography of the organic and Fair Trade banana supply chain in the Dominican Republic, this research reveals how Fair Trade as a “spatial fix” for capital and a “small farm imaginary” work to marginalize a particular class of workers. It also reveals the unseen sociality of Fair Trade standards in the systemic and structural assumptions in the small farm production model that Fair Trade promotes. The study finds that smallhold workers are essential to sustaining the market for Fair Trade bananas in a form of functional dualism between smallholders and plantations. In a counterintuitive outcome of the workings of Fair Trade, workers might be better off in the medium-scale plantation model unique to the Dominican Republic.

Getting Beyond the “God Trick”: Toward Service Research

Recent calls for more discussion about “public geographies” highlight the need to understand the epistemologies and methodologies that shape the production of public geographic knowledge. Feminist theory and participatory and activist research methodologies have been used to provide a framework for undertaking the work of the public through research and practice. While engaging in our own public geographies, however, we realized some epistemological and methodological tensions in these frameworks. In this article we draw on Haraways (1988) critique of the “god trick” to interrogate these frameworks and propose new ways of positioning ourselves within the research context, which we call “service” research.

The Corporeal Marker Project (CMP): Teaching about Bodily Difference, Identity and Place through Experience.

In response to recent articles and ideas for experiential learning activities in human geography, this paper outlines a particular approach to learning about the body, difference, mobility and geographic space through experience. The Corporeal Marker Project designed and implemented by the authors provides a spatial experience of difference for students who represent themselves as ‘the other’ by marking their bodies outside accepted ‘norms’ in public and private spaces. The authors include a detailed description of this assignment, two examples of its use at separate campuses and different human geography courses, and reflections on its use and effectiveness.

Recently completed doctorates in social and cultural geography

Agriculture and rural communities in the USA are in a period of decline, but sustainability movements in rural communities show promise for revitalizing both rural communities and agriculture as a sector. Sustainable agriculture is committed to the ‘triple-bottom-line’ of social, economic and environmental justice, in which social equality, economic profitability and environmental soundness are emphasized. These discourses of justice, however, are not always translated into the practices of organizations committed to sustainability, according to some critics. This dissertation seeks to investigate how the sustainable agriculture social movement in Pennsylvania articulates these discourses and translates them into practice. The framework I use for this analysis includes a network ontology, which emphasizes social change through connection. I studied three groups (or networks) in Pennsylvania: a marketing co-operative, a women’s group and a farm-based education programme. The methods for the analysis are primarily qualitative, but include visualizing and analysing social networks and political agency through the use of geographic visualization technologies. The research concludes that sustainable agriculture in Pennsylvania is committed to social change and the triplebottom-line, but these ideals are translated rather imperfectly into the practices of individuals and groups. Organic agriculture supports environmentally friendly practices, and helps farmers stay in business, but reproduces some of the social injustices of conventional agriculture, such as the exploitation of labour. Women in conventional agriculture are traditionally marginalized from spaces of knowledge and power, because they are not seen as ‘real’ farmers. Efforts to provide education and agency to women in sustainable agriculture also fall prey to identity politics based on who qualifies as a farmer. Farm-based education programmes designed to spread knowledge about environmentally friendly farming practices also translate well into productivist models when an emphasis is on technical practices, rather than on community and holistic farm management. In summary, the networks facilitate the pursuit of justice, but confront obstacles regarding ‘who belongs’, the scale of the organization and the length of the network.