Introducing myself and my journal
by jaffej | March 22, 2010 at 8:16 AM
About Me:
I am a social scientist of development and professor of sociology and social studies at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada. I teach sociology of development, sociology of environment, theory and gender. My most recent research and writing focuses on how rural communities are affected by neoliberalism and on women's agrifood knowledge, but I am also interested in a broad range of questions related to property relations, rural poverty, local knowledge, natural resources, farmer-bred crops and livestock, sustainability and culture. I have worked in Haiti, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Chile, Israel, and Saskatchewan, and am just beginning a project on local knowledge in Ethiopia with nutritionists and agricultural scientists. I wrote both my Masters thesis and Ph.D dissertation on Haiti, which helped me to co-design, and then be the farming systems research specialist for, the sustainable agriculture and agroforestry project Pwoje Sove Te (Project Save the Land). I was a Review Editor on the Global Volume of the IAASTD (International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development www.agassessment.org) and am author and co-editor of Farm Communities at the Crossroads: The Challenge and the Resistance (CPRC Press) and Contesting Fundamentalisms (Fernwood). Some other selected publications that show the range of my interests are: Choosing Quality: The Knowledge Intensification Shift. In Walters, Lynn, ed. Critical Food Issues: Problems and State-of-the-Art Solutions Worldwide; Sustainable Development in the New Economy: Risk, Vulnerability and Eco-Social Justice, Currents (7)1: 1-14; Victual Vicissitudes: Consumer Deskilling and the (Gendered) Transformation of Food Systems. Agriculture and Human Values (23) 2: 143-162; Social Cohesion, Neoliberalism and the Entrepreneurial Community in Rural Saskatchewan. American Behavioral Scientist (50)2: 206-225; Underdevelopment By Design: How Agricultural Development Programs Increase Poverty and Inequality in Poor Countries—the Case of Haiti. Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Vol.2 1, No.42; and “Land Use, Soil Degradation, and Farmer Decision-Making: A Sondeo Report of Cavalier, Despa, Kols, and Saut Mathurine, Haiti.” Port-au-Prince, Haiti: United States Agency for International Development. (Working Paper). http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/handle/10535/4152.
My Passions:
social justice, family, friends, music, reading, theatre, dancing, water, summer, my students, the social sciences, visiting markets and fields, cooking, gardening
My Areas of Expertise:
sociology of development, agriculture and environment; sustainable/alternative development; gender; farming systems research; rural household studies; social ecology; agrarian social structure; agrifood knowledge
