Embedded Files
Education
2018 PhD. Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2010 MSc. Management of Agro-ecological Knowledge and Social Change, Wageningen University
2008 BS. Agronomy, South Dakota State University
Appointments
2018-present Postdoctoral associate. Department of Development Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (Current)
2011 Research associate, Crop and Soil Sciences Department, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC
2010 Social impact research fellow, Root Cause, Cambridge, MA
2009 Assistant project evaluator, ONG Chakana, La Paz, Bolivia
2008 Monitoring and evaluation assistant, International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, Kumasi, Ghana
2007 Research assistant, Plant Science Department, South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD
External Grants and Awards
2014 Fulbright-Institute of International Education, Fulbright Research Grant ($19,100)
2014 Wenner-Gren Foundation, Dissertation Fieldwork Grant ($8,275), Gr. 8906
2014 US Department of Education, Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship ($15,000) [Declined]
2012 Society for Economic Anthropology, Halperin Memorial Fund Travel Grant ($1,500)
2012 Tinker Foundation, Pre-Dissertation Travel Grant ($2,100)
2012 US Department of Education, Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship ($15,000)
Internal Grants and Awards
2019 Polson Institute, Cornell University, Small Grants Program (w/Wendy Wolford) ($5,000)
2019 Institute for the Social Sciences, Cornell University, Small Grants Program (w/Wendy Wolford) ($5,000)
2017 UNC-CH Graduate School, Dissertation Completion Fellowship ($18,000)
2016 UNC-CH Graduate and Professional Student Federation, Travel Award ($400)
2014 UNC-CH Graduate School, Off-Campus Dissertation Research Fellowship ($7,600)
2014 UNC-CH Institute for the Study of the Americas, Latino Migration Research Award ($700)
Books
“Welcome to Soylandia! Making American farmers and the Brazilian Cerrado.” Book manuscript in preparation for Cornell University Press Series on Land (expected submission late 2020).
“The bio-cultural life of soy in America: Four stories of the future of food and farming” Book manuscript in preparation for University of North Carolina Press (expected submission late 2022).
Refereed Journal Articles
2018. Ofstehage, Andrew. “Farming out of place: Transnational family farmers, flexible farming, and the rupture of rural life in Bahia, Brazil.” American Ethnologist. 45 (3): 317-329.
2018. Ofstehage, Andrew. “Financialization of work, value, and social organization among transnational soy farmers in the Brazilian Cerrado,” Economic Anthropology. 5 (2): 274-285.
2016. Ofstehage, Andrew. “Farming is Easy, Becoming Brazilian is Hard: North American Soy Farmers’ Social Values of Production, Work, and Land in Soylandia,” Journal of Peasant Studies. 43 (2): 442-460.
2012. Ofstehage, Andrew. “The Construction of an Alternative Quinoa Economy: Balancing Solidarity, Household Needs, and Profit in San Agustín, Bolivia.” Journal of Agriculture and Human Values 29 (4): 441-454
2011. Ofstehage, Andrew. “Nusta Juira's Gift of Quinoa: Peasants, Trademarks, and Intermediaries in the Transformation of a Bolivian Commodity Economy.” Anthropology of Work Review 32 (2): 103-114.
Book Chapters
2019. Ofstehage, Andrew. “Transmission of the Brazil Model of Industrial Soybean Production: A Comparative Study of Two Migrant Farming Communities in the Brazilian Cerrado.” In In Defense of Farmers: The Future of Agriculture in the Shadow of Corporate Power (eds. Jane W. Gibson and Sara E. Alexander). Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press (289-324).
2018. Ofstehage, Andrew. “Farming is Easy, Becoming Brazilian is Hard: North American Soy Farmers’ Social Values of Production, Work, and Land in Soylandia,” In Soy, Globalization, and Environmental Politics in South America (Eds. Gustavo Oliveira and Susanna Hecht). London, Routledge (192-210).
2017. Ofstehage, Andrew. “Encounters with the Brazilian Soy Boom: Transnational farmers and the Cerrado.” In Food, Agriculture, and Social Change: The Everyday Vitality of Latin America (Eds. Stephen Sherwood, Alberto Arce, and Myriam Paredes). London: Earthscan (60-72).
2017. Ofstehage, Andrew. “From US Farm Crisis to the Cerrado Soy Frontier: Financializing Farming and Exporting Farmers.” In Land Justice: Re-imagining Land, Food, and the Commons. (Eds. Eric Holt-Gimenez and Justine Williams). Oakland: Food First (174-190).
Encyclopedia Articles
2019 Ofstehage, Andrew. “Farming.” Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology. http://www.anthroencyclopedia.com/entry/farming
Book reviews and Non-Peer Reviewed Articles
2019. Ofstehage, Andrew. “U.S. Farmers Made in Brazil.” Sapiens. https://www.sapiens.org/culture/family-farm-brazil/
2016. Ofstehage, Andrew. Food Systems in an Unequal World: Pesticides, Vegetables, and Agrarian Capitalism in Costa Rica. Ryan E. Galt. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2014; The Journal of Agriculture and Human Values 36(1): 41-42.
2015. Ofstehage, Andrew. The Struggle for Maize: Campesinos, Workers, and Transgenic Corn in the Mexican Countryside. Elizabeth Fitting. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011; The Anthropology of Work Review 36(1): 41-42
Academic Theses
2018 "When We Came there Was Nothing": Land, Work, and Value among Transnational Soybean Farmers in the Brazilian Cerrado.” PhD Dissertation: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2010 “The Gift of the Middleman: An Ethnography of Quinoa Trading Networks in Los Lipez of Bolivia.” Master’s Thesis: Wageningen University, Wageningen.
2008 “The Economic, Social, and Environmental Benefits of Fair Trade Coffee and Other Solutions to the Coffee Crisis.” Senior thesis: South Dakota State University.
Invited Talks
2019 “American farmers in the Brazilian Cerrado: Making investible land, fertile soil, and better farmers” Development Sociology Seminar Series, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, December 6.
2017 “Ethnographic Interview Practices.” Meaningful Measurement Workshop, State Library of North Carolina, Raleigh, NC, November 17.
2013 “Gifts of Middlewomen: A Look at the Everyday Realities of Quinoa Production and Trading in Bolivia.” 2013 International Year of Quinoa at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA, October 24.
Chaired sessions
2020 “Debates on the Social Life of Land: Launching the Land Series at Cornell University Press,” American Association of Geographers, Denver, CO, April 8.
2019 with Brianna Farber “Reimagining American farm crisis: Stagnation, struggle, and change,” American Anthropological Association, Vancouver, BC, November 22.
2018 with Serena Stein “Foreignization, Farmland, and Food: Estrangement and Belonging in Global Agriculture,” American Anthropological Association, San Jose, CA, November 15 (Awarded co-sponsored status by Culture and Agriculture section and Anthropology and Environment Society).
2018 “The Everyday Vitality of Food and Agriculture in Latin America,” Society for Applied Anthropology, April 4.
2017 with Serena Stein “Sedimentation: Extraction, Soil and Memory,” American Anthropological Association, November 29.
2016 “Transnationalizing Ethnography: Challenges, Implications, and Methods,” American Anthropological Association, November 16.
2013 with Justine Williams “What is Alternative Agriculture? Disentangling the Relationships Between Autonomy, Social Justice and Environmental Stewardship in Food and Farming,” Dimensions of Political Ecology, Lexington, KY, November 3.
2012 “Everyday Resistance to Agricultural Neoliberalization among Latin American and Caribbean Farmers.” Critical Geography Conference, Chapel Hill, NC, November 3.
Paper Presentations
2019 “Negotiating waste and value in Soylandia.” Latin American Studies Association, Boston, MA, May 27.
2019 “The emergence of transnational family farmers: Mitigating farming crisis through commodity frontier expansion.” Social Relations of the Capitalocene: Work, Value(s) and Personhood Below the Commanding Heights, Halle/Salle, Germany, January 25.
2018 “Limitations to flexible farming in the Plantationocene: Transnational family farmers, meaning-making, and emerging materialities in the Brazilian Cerrado,” American Anthropological Association, San Jose, CA, November 15.
2018 “Socio-ecological crisis on the American Prairie and soybean frontier expansion in the Brazilian Cerrado,” Disasters, Displacement, and Human Rights Conference, Knoxville, TN, February 11.
2017 “Transnational farmers, soy, and the Brazilian Cerrado: A wasteland redeemed,” American Anthropological Association, Washington, DC, November 29.
2017 “Financialization of Work, Value, and Social Relations Among Transnational Soy Farmers in the Cerrado,” Society for Economic Anthropology, Iowa City, IA, April 7.
2016 “Thanksgiving in the Cerrado, Skyping to Indiana, and Other Methods of Transnational Ethnography,” American Anthropological Association, Minneapolis, MN, November 16.
2016 “A Comparative Study of Transnational Soy Farmers in Brazil: Transmission of Agricultural Practices, Forms of Work, and Values of Farming,” Society for Applied Anthropology, Vancouver, BC, March 31
2015 “An Anthropological Approach to Agrarian Change: Realizing Plurality among Caribbean and South American Farmers,” w/ Caela Connell and Justine Williams. Association of American Geographers, Chicago, IL, April 23.
2014 “Agriculture without Borders? Constructing Social and Material Borders through Transnational Farming,” UNC-Duke Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies Conference, Chapel Hill, NC, February 8.
2013 “Producing Soybeans and Re-producing the North American Family Farm: A Political Ecology Perspective on the Foreignization of Space,” Latin American Studies Association Meeting, Washington DC, May 30
2013 “Farming is Easy, Becoming Brazilian is Hard: The Emergence of a North American Farming Life-sphere in Soylandia.” Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, CA, April 12
2013 “Defending the Base of the Midwest Family Farm or Acting Out the Corporate Food Regime? Career Histories of North American Farmers in Bahia, Brazil.” Dimensions of Political Ecology, Lexington, KY, March 2.
2013 “Transnational Farmscapes in Soylandia: Seeing the Soy Boom Through Landscapes of North American Farms in Bahia, Brazil.” UNC-Duke Consortium in Latin American and Caribbean Studies Conference, Chapel Hill, NC, February 16.
2012 “Turning Quinoa Commodification on Its Head: Creative Action and Resistance to Neoliberal Agricultural Development in Los Lipez.” Critical Geography Conference, Chapel Hill, NC. November 3.
2011 “Quinueros, Middlemen and Cooperatives: Regional Quinoa Trade in Bolivia.” Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, Seattle, WA. March 31.
Poster Presentations
2013 “Development and Dispossession in Soylandia: Quotidian Realities of the Global Corporate Food Regime.” Conference for the Society for Economic Anthropology, St. Louis, MO, April 13
Academic Workshop Presentations
2019 “Wasteland and oasis in the Brazilian Cerrado: The socio-material life of land in Soylandia.” Social life of land workshop. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, April 12-14.
2016 “Socio-ecological crisis in the U.S., Brazilian soya boom, and the ongoing emergence of transnational family farming.” Critical food studies writeshop. Meeuwenveen en Havelte, The Netherlands, March 8-12.
2015 “Negotiating the U.S. Farm Crisis and Brazilian Soy Boom: North American Farmers in Brazil.” Estudios críticos de la agricultura y la alimentación: Perspectivas sobre el actor, la práctica y el territorio en América Latina. Otavalo, Ecuador, August 22-25.
2014 “Contesting Legal Infrastructures in Soylandia.” Infrastructural Worlds: A Workshop on Ethnographic Studies of the Built Environment. Durham, NC, March 28-29.
2010 “Defending the Regional Economy: The Case of the Rise of a Place-Based Good in Bolivia.” Market as Commons Workshop, Chapel Hill, NC. September 10-11.
Teaching Record
As instructor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC
ANTH 102: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (online), Summer 2017.
ANTH 102: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Summer 2016.
ANTH 259: Culture and Identity, Spring 2016.
As teaching assistant at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC
ANTH 284: Culture and Consumption with Dr. Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld, Spring 2014.
ANTH 120: Anthropology through Expressive Cultures with Dr. Jean Dennison, Fall 2013.
ASIA 252: Popular Culture in Modern Southeast Asia with Dr. Lorraine Aragon, Fall 2013.
ANTH 101: Introduction to Anthropology with Dr. Charles Price, Spring 2012.
ANTH 101: Introduction to Anthropology with Dr. John Scarry, Fall 2011.
Teaching Development
Graduate student advising, Development Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 2018-pr
Student-intern adviser, Integrated Land Management-Oxfam America, Ithaca, NY, 2018-pr
Organizer, Integrated Land Management Workshop, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 2018
Organizer, Social Life of Land Workshop, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 2018
Writing Coach, Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, 2016-17
Social Studies Education Consultant, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, 2014-17
Tutor, Athletic Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, 2011-13
Service
Secretary-Treasurer, Culture & Agriculture section of the AAA 2019-pr.
Graduate Admissions Committee, Student Anthropology Society, UNC-Chapel Hill 2016
Graduate Admissions Committee, Student Anthropology Society, UNC-Chapel Hill 2015
Co-chair, Student Anthropology Society, UNC-Chapel Hill 2012-14
Curriculum Committee, Student Anthropology Society, UNC-Chapel Hill 2012
Brownbag Committee, Student Anthropology Society, UNC-Chapel Hill 2012
Chairman of the Board, Wageningen Student Organization, Wageningen University 2009
President and Founder, South Dakota Students for Fair Trade, South Dakota State 2007-08
Reviewer: Culture, Agriculture, Food, and Environment, Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Latin American Research Review, Food and Foodways, Land, Outlook on Agriculture, American Ethnologist, Current Anthropology, Economic Anthropology, Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, Agriculture and Human Values
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