BA Hons.(University of Toronto), MA, PhD (New School for Social Research).
Email Phone
Elizabeth.Fitting@dal.ca (902) 494-6346
Location
FASS Building, Room 3116
Profile
Dr. Fitting is an anthropologist who works on the politics of food, rural migration and culture and political economy with a regional focus on Latin America. She is currently finishing a book on contested notions of agricultural efficiency, risk and culture in the debates about genetically engineered (GE) corn imports to Mexico under NAFTA. The book also examines the effects of such imports and policy on a community of indigenous maize farmers and migrants. In a smaller project, Dr. Fitting researched the post-revolutionary history of irrigation management in the Tehuacán Valley, Mexico, where constructions of rural subjectivity among indigenous peasants have been remade through violent conflict and demands on the state for water rights. Liz teaches courses on the Anthropology of Globalization, Gender and Sexuality in Latin America, the Honours Seminar in Social Anthropology, and Food and Eating Across Cultures.
Her on going research and teaching interests focus on:
The politics of food, GMOs, and agriculture
Peasants, rural migration, and development
Commodity studies and globalization
Theories of the state
Gender and ethnicity
Liz is also co-editor of the Reviews Section of the Journal of Peasant Studies.
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=0306-6150&linktype=44
Publications
Accepted: Fitting, E. The Struggle for Mexican Maize: Experts, Peasants, and Migrants in a
Globalized Countryside, Book manuscript. Duke University Press.
2008, “Chapter 6. Importing corn, exporting labor: The neoliberal corn regime, GMOs
and the erosion of Mexican biodiversity” in (ed) Gerardo Otero, Food for the Few: Neoliberal Globalism and Agricultural Biotechnology in Latin America. University of Texas Press.
2007a, “‘Más sangre que agua’: Reclamos al estado en el Valle de Tehuacán” [‘More blood than water’: Claims on the State in the southern Tehuacan Valley] in (ed.) Francisco Gómez Carpentiero, Paisajes Mexicanos de la Reforma Agraria: Homenaje a William Roseberry. Colegio de Michoacán.
2007b, “La economía natural enfrenta al global? Desafíos a los debates sobre el maíz mexicano” Bajo el Volcán. Revista de BUAP. 7 (11): 17-44.
2006a, “Importing corn, exporting labor: The neoliberal corn regime, GMOs, and the erosion of biodiversity in Mexico” in Agriculture and Human Values 23: 15-26.
2006b, “The political uses of culture: maize production & the GM corn debates in Mexico”
Focaal, European Journal of Anthropology 48: 17-34.
2004, “‘No hay dinero en la milpa’: El maíz y el hogar transnacional del sur del Valle de
Tehuacán” in Leigh Binford (ed.), La Economía Política de la Migración Acelerada Internacional de Puebla y Veracruz: Siete Estudios de Caso. DF: Editorial Luna Arena (pp. 61-101).