Andrew Flachs
Please join me in congratulating Andrew Flachs, assistant professor of anthropology, on the publication of his book Cultivating Knowledge: Biotechnology, Sustainability, and the Human Cost of Cotton Capitalism in India (University of Arizona Press, 2019).
Cultivating Knowledge draws on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork 2012-2018 with farmers growing genetically modified and organic cotton in Telangana, India. By comparing the experiences of farmers engaged with these mutually exclusive visions for the future of agriculture, Flachs investigates the human responses to global agrarian change, including the slow, persistent dangers of pesticides, inequalities in rural life, the aspirations of people who grow fibers sent around the world, the place of ecological knowledge in modern agriculture, and even the complex threat of suicide.
Congratulations, Dr. Flachs!
David A. Reingold
Justin S. Morrill Dean
College of Liberal Arts