IGD

Institute of Geography and Sustainability of the University of Lausanne
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‘Alternative Agricultures’ as Concrete Utopias Peasant Experiences, Experiments and Struggles in Switzerland and Morocco

Research fields Political ecologies
Agroecology
Keywords Agriculture
Political Ecology
Pesants
Agri-food systems
Funding Institute of Geography and Sustainability
Duration September 2021 - September 2026
Website
Researchers Kull Christian (Supervision) [web] [email]
Mathez Andrea (Doctoral student) [web] [email]

My doctoral research focuses on 'alternative agricultures' in Switzerland and Morocco - forms of peasant agro-ecology that have persisted or emerged outside of agricultural planning and state control - with the idea that these forms of agriculture contain within them answers to one or more of the problems generated by so-called modern or industrial agriculture. I mobilize Ernst Bloch's concept of Concrete Utopia(s) and a Community Economies perspective in order to explore the extent to which these spaces of experimentation and survival carry within them the seeds for imagining and implementing socially more just and ecologically more viable agri-food futures. To do so, I focus on the multiple dimensions – economic, political, historic, cultural, socio-ecological and emotional – that (re)make peasant experiences, experiments and struggles in these two countries.



Saffran Harvest - Doukouk (Morocco)