Die Amerikas: Forschungskolloquium zu den Amerikas aus kulturwissenschaftlicher Sicht

Claire Lagier, M.A. (Rachel Carson Center)

Pedagogy at the Latin American School of Agroecology: an interdisciplinary approach

The Brazilian landless movement (MST) is widely considered one of the best organized rural popular movements in the world. Originally a Marxist-Leninst movement struggling for agrarian reform and a model of agriculture based on full cooperatives, monocultures and technological packages, it started in the 1990s to take a turn towards internationalism, through its participation in the global peasant movement Via Campesina, and towards a new model of agrarian reform based on food sovereignty and agroecology. The Via Campesina Latin American school of agroecology (ELAA), which is located in the MST settlement Contestado, near Lapa (Paraná) and partnered with the Federal Institute of Paraná, a public university, is embedded into local, regional and transnational networks in which it facilitates the production and diffusion of agroecological relations with the surrounding landscape, knowledge and values.

The word agroecology was first used in the first half of the 20th century by Russian, American and German scientists meaning to qualify the use of principles from ecology, botany, zoology and plant physionomy in agronomy and agricultural land management. Since the 1970s, partly in response to the Green Revolution and its environmental impacts, the term has also carried practical and political meanings. It has also evolved into a distinct field of scientific knowledge, in which scientists do research on ecological aspects of agroecosystems and food systems, while taking a clear public stance against the industrial agricultural model. Today, agroecology has some aspects of a scientific discipline, with research centers, textbooks, university courses and dedicated scientific journals. It is also a concept which has been adopted as a central ideological pillar by social movements, for whom it carries strong connotations of anti-capitalist struggle and valorisation of traditional and Indigenous knowledge, and integrated into policy in a few countries, with various aims and results.

Based on my ongoing doctoral research, the presentation will attempt to walk the audience through three main axes of reflection. First, through the theoretical lens of commoning (Helfrich and Bollier, 2015 ; Federici, 2012 ; Weber, 2013, Shantz, 2013), which will be used throughout the whole dissertation, and a post-Polanyist perspective on enclosures (Fraser, 2009, Müller et al., 2015) we will look at the pedagogy, production methods, values and cultural practices associated with agroecology at ELAA, their intersections with and effects on the MST's ideology, and the strategic role these elements play in what Van der Ploeg (2009) calls “the peasant condition”. Then, we will look into practices of land-sharing and conservation on the Contestado settlement, and historical aspects of landscape transformation through occupation and agroecological construction on this specific territory, using among others Martinez-Allier's “environmentalism of the poor” (2002). Finally, we will reflect on the many elements that are said to define agroecology across settings, epistemological (in)disciplinarity, practices and boundaries within agroecology, and the way knowledge is constructed in a case where science is openly political.

Wann?            Donnerstag, 17. November 2016, 18 -20 Uhr

Wo?                Oettingenstr. 67, Raum L155 (Obergeschoss)

Veranstalter:  Institut für Ethnologie Lageplan

Programm zu den kulturwissenschaftlichen Forschungen in den Amerikas unter der Leitung von Prof. Dr. Eveline Dürr für das Wintersemester 2016/17 hier zum Download.

Mehr Informationen zu Vorträgen am Institut für Ethnologie im Wintersemester 2016/17 finden Sie unter „Veranstaltungen".

Sie können auch das Archiv mit den Veranstaltungen der vergangenen Jahre besuchen.