On the occasion of the PhD defense of Jacob van Etten, a CERES seminar is organized. Professor Karl Zimmerer (University of Wisconsin Madison) will give a lecture:
"Hybridity in the Social-Ecological Dynamics of Andean Potato Biodiversity”
This talk discusses the idea of hybridity in the management of the agrobiodiversity of Andean potatoes. It uses this concept to examine a series of key conditions in the management and conservation of Andean potato agrobiodiversity. These conditions are the following: the practices of cultural knowledge and Farmer Variety selection; field-level adaptive management and interactions; landscape-level adaptive capacities; multiple-landscape geographies of seed flow; the spatial organization of land use; micro-economics of resource allocation in response to migration, diversification, and cash cropping; and the management of soil and water environments.
Karl Zimmerer is a geographer and environmental scientist researching and teaching on the topics of the dynamics of agrobiodiversity in tropical mountains (currently focused on irrigation and the relations of new water resource management to agrobiodiversity change); globalization and human-environment change (with emphasis on agriculture and rural livelihoods); and the development and experience of spatial-environmental models, environmental science, and conservation planning. Karl is the author of numerous articles and his book and monographs include four publications, most recently Globalization and New Geographies of Conservation (2006, University of Chicago). He is also active in various organizations that are involved with agricultural, environmental, conservation, and globalization policies and also edits the Nature-Society section of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers.