Research Area C Agrarian Alternatives (C15)
Agrarian Alternatives: Agrarian Crisis, Global Concerns and the Contested Agro-ecological Futures in South Asia
Project Leader: Daniel Münster
Project Members: Saee Haldule-Bonvin, Julia Poerting
Agriculture has gained a new level of importance particularly in light of the debates and diagnoses regarding of the contemporary global predicament and the environmental future of human society. While most scholarship on global agrarian environments documents symptoms of crisis, limits to growth and declining knowledge and livelihoods, this project focused on agrarian alternatives as they emerge in these times of uncertainty. The project critically investigated practices, ideas, institutions and bio-technologies that claim to contribute to a more ecologically sustainable, viable and socially just framework for agriculture. Ethnographic case studies at different scales aimed to identify spaces of possibility created by rural actors, policy-makers, corporations and new seed technologies. The project further located actors and practices in a global perspective by documenting flows of knowledge, technologies and concerns from the personal (livelihood) to global debates about economic and environmental futures.