Sarah Besky
Sarah Besky is a fourth-year graduate student in Cultural Anthropology. She has taken courses in the anthropology of South Asia, the environment, agro-food systems, and sustainable agriculture, in preparation for her upcoming dissertation research on tea production in Darjeeling , West Bengal . She will be comparing the transition from conventional to fair trade organic production on two sites. Both Makaibari Tea Estates, a large plantation, and a CHAI small farmer cooperative, which is supported by Starbucks subsidiary Tazo Tea and the Darjeeling Earth Group, have begun producing tea under fair trade organic guidelines. Set and regulated by transnational NGOs, fair trade organic guidelines are intended to eliminate the use of harmful agrochemicals and to empower farmers by guaranteeing that they receive a living wage for their work. Fair trade organic tea fetches a higher price than conventional tea on the global market, and many in Darjeeling see fair trade certification as a potential solution to the problem of plantation foreclosure and unemployment.
Sarah's research asks how two dissimilar land tenure systems, the plantation and the cooperative, can both be sites for the “empowerment” of farmers. To answer this question, she will be investigating the ways in which farm workers on both sites have begun to put ideas of “fairness” into practice in their lives. What implications do the alternative consumptive practices of Americans and Europeans have for plantation and cooperative farmers, especially given that fair trade guidelines may be less strenuous than existing Indian labor laws? Do farmers see fair trade certification as a meaningful extension of such laws? Ultimately, Sarah is investigating the changing meaning of “empowerment” in an era of trade liberalization, the retreat of the state from environmental and social welfare, and increased consumer consciousness about the origins and production of food.
Sarah holds a B.A. in Anthropology and Asian Culture and Religious Experience from Connecticut College , and currently she is an Associate Lecturer for “Introduction to East Asian Studies.” She will begin her dissertation fieldwork in January 2008, with the support of a Fulbright Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship. She has received FLAS fellowships in Tibetan, Hindi, and Nepali from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for South Asia , and she has received additional research support from the Scott Kloeck-Jenson Foundation, administered by the Center for Global Studies.
Sarah's website http://mywebspace.wisc.edu/besky/homepage/index.html
