“Global commodity chains and agri-food systems: shifting patterns of regulation and implications for development”

Speakers:        
Nicole Breazeale and Jenny Wiegel
Department of Sociology/Rural Sociology
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Date:          
Thursday, October 5, 2006

Time:           
4:00-5:30pm

Place:              
IPPSR Conference Room 313, Berkey Hall

This informal seminar is designed to encourage a multi-disciplinary dialogue on emerging socio-economic and policy issues linked to global agri-food system restructuring, with specific presentations on community level impacts in field locations as diverse as Argentina, Kentucky, and Nicaragua. Faculty and graduate student input on this work in progress would be greatly appreciated.

Speakers’ Bios:

Nicole Breazeale is also a PhD candidate in Sociology/Rural Sociology at the University of Wisconsin. Her research interests include: Sociology of Agro-Food Systems, Globalization, Uneven Development, Gender, Visual Sociology, Appalachia, and Latin America. Nicole’s present research combines comparative ethnography in the global North and South with a commodity chain perspective, examining the interplay between corporate and state strategies as well as local producers. Specifically, her dissertation research examines how changes in the global tobacco industry have differentially impacted two tobacco-producing communities in Kentucky, USA, and Misiones, Argentina.

Jenny Wiegel is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology/Rural Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  She is primarily interested in the Sociology of Agriculture in developing countries and the Sociology of Economic Change and Development, with a particular focus on Latin America, where she worked in agricultural research and extension for 10 years.  Hermost recent research looks at the impact of supermarkets on small farmers who produce for them in Nicaragua. Other interests include the political economy of agricultural research in developing countries, and farmers associations.

ALL ARE WELCOME

MSU is an affirmative-action, equal-opportunity institution.