WHEN? Thu 12.5.2016 13.15 – 15.00

WHERE? University of Tampere, Edu’s Cafe (Virta-building, Åkerlundinkatu 5).

Co-hosted by Art-Eco Project and School of Education, University of Tampere

ABSTRACT:  The southern portion of Jamaica’s St Elizabeth parish is considered Jamaica’s ‘breadbasket’ due to favorable climatic conditions and large number of smallholder farmers.  However, effects of contemporary globalization have created new challenges and exacerbated some existing ones for these farmers. Political ecology is an approach employed by researchers across multiple disciplines that aims to understand choices made by people regarding how they interact with their environment through analyzing power operations. Employing examples from fieldwork and drawing upon a political ecology framework, this talk examines the role of modernist discourses in shaping agricultural landscapes in a postcolonial setting through the decisions and motivations of actors at multiple scales.

BIO: Gary Schnakenberg received his Ph.D. in Geography at Michigan State University in 2013, where he currently teaches courses in human geography and nature-society studies.  His research interests are in critical cultural geographies of agriculture, political ecology, the Caribbean, and processes involving identity in place-making. Prior to his doctoral work, Gary was a high school teacher in New Hampshire (USA) for 26 years, teaching a variety of social studies classes, focusing especially on geography. He served on the Geography subcommittee of the New Hampshire Department of Education Social Studies Frameworks Committee, and was a founding member of the New Hampshire Geographic Alliance. He lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan with his wife and partner Dr. Rebecca Martusewicz and their dogs and cats.