Wednesday, January 31, 2018 - 12:30

Wed, January 31, 2018 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM LIU INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL ISSUES. Free. Speaker: Gastón Gordillo, UBC Anthropology
Topic: The Imperial Metropolis: the Infrastructure of the Soy Supply Chain in South America
Location: Liu Multipurpose Room

About Gastón Gordillo:

In his current ethnographic research, Dr. Gordillo is analyzing the social and spatial impact that agribusiness is having on the western edge of the Gran Chaco in northern Argentina. In particular, he is focusing on the political responses by local people affected by the land grabs, evictions, and deforestation triggered by the global demand for soybeans. He is examining these disruptions and conflicts as the result of the subsumption of rural areas to the planetary Metropolis, which he conceives of as the material infrastructure and high-speed currents of goods and energy that make up globalization.

Research interests: terrain and the materiality of space; violence; affect; ruins and ruination; critical theory and continental philosophy; protests and insurrections; the “soy boom” and resistance to agribusiness in South America; Argentina; the Gran Chaco.

The UBC Future of Food Global Dialogue Series events are free and open to all. This campus-wide initiative brings together food security and sustainability experts from across the globe to engage the UBC community and the public around the Global Food System.