This first sustained ethnographic study of organic agriculture outside the United States traces its meanings, practices, and politics in two nations typically considered worlds apart: Latvia and Costa Rica. Situated on the frontiers of the European Union and the United States, these geopolitically and economically in-between places illustrate ways that international treaties have created contradictory pressures for organic farmers.

Organic farmers in both countries build multispecies networks of biological and social diversity and create spaces of sovereignty within state and suprastate governance bodies. Organic associations in Central America and Eastern Europe face parallel challenges in balancing multiple identities as social movements, market sectors, and NGOs while finding their place in regions and nations reshaped by world events.

About the Author

Guntra A. Aistara is associate professor of environmental sciences and policy at Central European University in Budapest.

Reviews

"This book should be required reading for students or scholars entering fieldwork in these respective countries. This book would also make an excellent case study to compliment graduate or advanced undergraduate courses in environmental anthropology and agrarian studies."

* Conservation and Society *

"This comparative ethnography offers a helpful discussion of free trade agreements and the politics of harmonisation centred on organic farming in addition to being relevant to readers interested in organic agriculture, seed politics, and biodiversity. This book would be a good course text for advanced undergraduate or graduate students in anthropology and environmental studies because it engages key debates about organic agriculture, offers new material on the struggles faced by organic farmers in these two countries, and provides an interesting discussion of theoretical approaches and key concepts."

* Anthropologica *

"[A] wonderfully insightful comparative ethnographic study."

* H-Net *

"Organic Sovereignties makes a powerful case for the value of studying small organic producers around the world and understanding the complexities they navigate...The book is appropriate for upper-division undergraduate or graduate courses on biodiversity, culture, and agriculture, and readers interested in these topics will benefit from "thinking between the posts" of postsocialist and postcolonial studies."

* Slavic Review *

"Organic Sovereignties deepens and refines understandings of contemporary organic move-ments positioned within agrarian landscapes undergoing political, economic, and social transformations. Aistara presents a carefully researched and nuanced account of how organic farmers in Latvia and Costa Rica navigate their ideals in tandem with new forms of regulation that have accompanied the former's accession to the European Union (EU) and the latter's incorporation into the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)...Her research makes an original and valuable contribution to a growing body of critical scholarship examining organic farming."

* Journal of Peasant Studies *

"[R]igorously researched...The book makes several noteworthy theoretical contributions."

* Food Anthropology *

"[A] wonderful book on the complex nature of global organic agricultural production. It is a book that needs to be read closely and completely, not skimmed or perused."

* Anthropology of Work Review *



Book Information
ISBN 9780295743110
Author Guntra A. Aistara
Format Paperback
Page Count 272
Imprint University of Washington Press
Publisher University of Washington Press
Weight(grams) 386g