Course Description
Agriculture and farmers in a cross-cultural, deep-time perspective, from the domestication of plants and animals 10,000 years ago, to how farmers throughout the world make ends meet while coping with risk and uncertainty, to the place of farming and farmers in the modern world system.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Graduate students will have an enhanced reading load accompanied by periodic meetings to discuss the readings. Students will be expected to write more lengthy and thorough research papers.
Athena Title
Culture and Agriculture
Prerequisite
ANTH 1102 or ANTH 1102E or ANTH 2120H
Semester Course Offered
Offered spring
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
* Critically evaluate arguments in scholarship or media about food production in relation to population, environmental sustainability, and economic growth; * Have a deeper, cross-cultural, and deep-time appreciation of the struggles facing farmers throughout history and today; * Have a greater understanding of the problems with the modern food supply system; * Have a broader understanding of how we know what we know about agriculture and farmers; * Have greater confidence making oral scholarly arguments; and * Have greater skill doing original research and writing and revising original scholarship.
Topical Outline
Part 1: The technological and social genesis of agriculture * Plant and animal domestication at the dawn of the Holocene * Why foragers become farmers * A qualitative and quantitative comparison of the costs and benefits of hunting and gathering versus agriculture * The invention of agriculture in Western social theory: "Agriculture" as civilization * Thomas Malthus sounds the population alarm Part 2: Agricultural adaptive strategies * How do farmers cope with risk and uncertainty? * Environmental constraints and possibilities * Intensification/extensification * Specialization/diversification * Exchange and storage * Agro-ecological knowledge Part 3: Agricultural modernity * Colonialism and the creation of the peasantry * Urban discourses about rural people * The Green Revolution and agricultural development * Migrant farm laborers and immigrant farmers * Agroecological knowledge and intellectual property * Food justice * Sustainable agriculture
Syllabus