Adriana
Premat
Department of Anthropology
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| Office: | SSC 3410 |
| Telephone: | (519) 661-2111 |
| Fax: | (519) 661-2157 |
| e-mail: | apremat@uwo.ca |
| Address: | Department of Anthropology University of Western Ontario London, ON Canada N6A 5C2 |
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Research Interests
My research focuses on the environment, agriculture, and food consumption as these intersect with issues related to poverty and sustainability in urban Latin America and in urban Canada. Theoretically, my interests fall under the anthropology of space and place, the anthropology of the state, and political ecology. Specifically, I have carried out ethnographic research on the practice of urban agriculture by marginal populations in Cuba (1997-2008) and Argentina (2005-2007), paying particular attention to how different forms of macro-economic and political organization influence the manner in which urban agriculture is practiced and “imagined” in these countries. In this research, I have approached the practice of urban agriculture as a window into broader societal changes, investigating among other things the implementation of sustainable agricultural technologies; shifting land-tenure patterns and access to food; and the redefinition of state-civil society relations in a context of restructuring economies. In 2008, funded by an internal SSHRC grant, I started a pilot research project in the city of Toronto, also looking at the practice of urban agriculture. In this project, I am exploring what motivates citizens in major Canadian centres, such as Toronto, to engage in urban agriculture and, in particular, how the various expressions of this practice connect with, and impact on, an environmentally-inspired agenda that attempts to re-define urbanites relationship to food and to “nature”.