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Guntra Aistara
Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy, Central European University, Vienna, Austria

Towards multispecies food sovereignty – relational futures at the land-sea interface

Outline

In the face of multiple social and ecological crises, farmers and rural communities seek food sovereignty as a means of ensuring a livable future. In an era of climate change, however, all species with whom we co-inhabit the landscape must navigate livable futures in relation to one another, as well as the shifting climactic conditions. In this talk I bring into conversation some insights from my work with organic farmers in Latvia and Costa Rica with my current research with small scale coastal fishers on the Baltic Sea coast. In my book Organic Sovereignties, I explored how farmers negotiated new relationships with their land, seeds, and each other, often in cooperation with other species in the landscape, as they carved out interstitial spaces of social sovereignties in the face of regionalization and globalization. The move from land to sea, however, illuminates crucial tensions that arise when we zoom in on the more-than-human dimensions of our understandings of food sovereignty. Fishers, although referred to in Latvia as “tillers of the sea,” are differently entwined in webs of interspecies relationships than farmers. They find themselves competing for declining fish stocks with growing populations of grey seals and invasive fish species like the round goby, who are also seeking new territories as they adapt to climate change. Each shift in food web dynamics reverberates through fishers’ social networks as they navigate EU fishing quotas, new technologies, marine conservation rules, and consumer relations in attempts to guarantee their livelihoods and lifeworlds. The talk will contemplate how this perspective shifts our understanding of adaptation, interdependence, and multispecies food sovereignty for liveable futures.

Negotiating Migration and the Making of Rural Communities

Outline

Migration is a transformative force in rural communities, challenging established local norms and fostering the negotiation of belonging. Bridging the perspectives of migration studies and rural studies, this lecture explores how migration is negotiated in rural settings, focusing on the everyday dynamics between long-established residents and newcomers. What can a migration lens contribute to the understanding of rural communities?

Seeking refuge in the future: a tale of fictions and frictions

Outline

In today’s Europe, amidst rising global authoritarianism, policymakers are betting on the rapid digitalisation of agriculture to address compounded crises. Framed by narratives of scarcity, visions of ‘connected’ rural areas, smart irrigation systems, self-driving tractors, precision spraying, and gene-edited, drought-resistant crops promise to deliver competitive and resilient food systems. Though most of these technologies are not fully developed, fraught with contradictions, and prohibitively costly, sociotechnical imaginaries of smart farming are currently re-defining critical strategic agendas.

The tension between the envisioned role of biodigital technologies and current realities calls for a deeper understanding of how Big Tech´s involvement in agriculture might further constrain possible futures. It also begs the question of what it means to invoke the future when studying food and agriculture. Feminist writers such as Ursula Le Guin and Octavia Butler seized the power of science fiction to critique entrenched social orders, mores and politics. Drawing from these and other compelling thought-experiments, how can one engage with agricultural futures in ways that resist the politics of fear and salvation? In other words, how to do the work of hesitation, radical imagination and reclaiming hope to open up political possibilities for ‘other worlds’?