TY - JOUR
T1 - The political ecology of shaded coffee plantations
T2 - conservation narratives and the everyday-lived-experience of farmworkers
AU - Jimenez-Soto, Esteli
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was funded by The Mexican Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT) (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología) and a UC-MEXUS Scholarship for Graduate Studies. I would like to thank Andrew Szasz, Madeleine Fairbairn and Stacy M. Philpott at the University of California, Santa Cruz, as well as Aaron Augsburger at the University of South Florida, who provided insightful comments and ideas to improve my work at different stages of this research. This work would not have been possible without the openness, kindness and critical eye provided by farmworkers and plantation owners during my research.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Shade-grown coffee conserves biodiversity and often improves peasant livelihoods in Latin America. However, farmworkers have been overwhelmingly overlooked, despite being a vulnerable and marginalized actor in the coffee production chain, facing food and labor inequalities. This ethnographic research explores how farmworkers perceive biodiversity conservation in labor-intensive organic coffee systems. I examine the tensions that arise when conservation narratives meet the everyday-lived-experience of farmworkers, emphasizing material and symbolic effects on farmworkers' lives. Through questioning shade-grown organic coffee as a just imaginary, I expose contradictions and trade-offs of biodiversity conservation in labor-intensive systems, relevant as we transition to more sustainable food systems.
AB - Shade-grown coffee conserves biodiversity and often improves peasant livelihoods in Latin America. However, farmworkers have been overwhelmingly overlooked, despite being a vulnerable and marginalized actor in the coffee production chain, facing food and labor inequalities. This ethnographic research explores how farmworkers perceive biodiversity conservation in labor-intensive organic coffee systems. I examine the tensions that arise when conservation narratives meet the everyday-lived-experience of farmworkers, emphasizing material and symbolic effects on farmworkers' lives. Through questioning shade-grown organic coffee as a just imaginary, I expose contradictions and trade-offs of biodiversity conservation in labor-intensive systems, relevant as we transition to more sustainable food systems.
KW - Conservation narratives
KW - farmworkers
KW - plantation labor
KW - political ecology of agriculture
KW - shade-grown organic coffee
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85081722016&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85081722016&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/03066150.2020.1713109
DO - 10.1080/03066150.2020.1713109
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85081722016
SN - 0306-6150
VL - 48
SP - 1284
EP - 1303
JO - Journal of Peasant Studies
JF - Journal of Peasant Studies
IS - 6
ER -