Julie Guthman, “Killing Life to Make Life: The Biopolitics of Soil Fumigant Regulation in California’s Strawberry Industry”

Julie Guthman, Professor in the Division of Social Sciences and Co-Director, Multicampus Research Program on Food and the Body, University of California Santa Cruz

“Killing Life to Make Life: The Biopolitics of Soil Fumigant Regulation in California’s Strawberry Industry”

Public Lecture: Thursday, Nov. 6, 2-3:30pm, Cone 113

Free and open to the public

 

Self-described foodie Julie Guthman asks hard questions about the political economy of food. For example, why is it that the “obesity epidemic” is so often framed as a problem of weak-willed consumers who need to cook more organics? Whose interests are served by directing public attention to obese bodies, and away from the details of agricultural policy? For that matter, is there an “obesity epidemic” at all, and what’s at stake in calling high obesity rates an “epidemic?” Guthman is the author of Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism (2011), and Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California (2004; 2nd ed.2014); as well as numerous articles in journals such as Cultural Geographies and Antipode. She received national popular attention in 2008 for the line that “Michael Pollan makes me want to eat Cheetos.”

(for a pdf flyer, click here)