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Julie Guthman

Julie Guthman, University of California at Santa Cruz professor and award winning author, presents “ Lives versus Livelihoods? Fumigants, Farmworkers and Biopolitics in California’s Strawberry Industry” on February 25, 6 p.m. in the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Architecture Auditorium. Guthman discusses if banning fumigants protects farmworkers or harms their livelihoods?

In the wake of the ban of ozone-depleting substances, debates over soil fumigants used in strawberry production in California have unusually invoked the lives and livelihoods of farmworkers, a population that has historically been marginalized and made invisible.

Activists emphasized the harm to bodies that the fumigants would cause, while the strawberry industry has consistently focused on how the reduction or loss of fumigants would precipitate a huge contraction of the industry and loss of jobs. Guthman argues that lives and livelihoods are not so separable, especially in the context of a border-induced labor shortage.

The lecture is sponsored by the UH Mānoa geography department. For more information, email the department.

More on Julie Guthman

Guthman is a geographer and professor of social sciences at the U.C. Santa Cruz. She is among the most influential scholars in the study of sustainable agriculture, farming practices and food activisms. She has critically examined the race, class and body politics of “alternative” food. Her current research examines the effects of pesticide regulation in California strawberry industry.

Starting with an attention to the contradictions of the organic food industry, she has developed an extensive body of work that places the alternative food movement within local, regional and global contexts. Through the lens of political economy, she offers a strong, if friendly, critique of what is now a vibrant cultural phenomenon in the United States.

She is the author of award winning books Agrarian Dreams: the Paradox of Organic Farming in California and Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice and the Limits of Capitalism.

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