2007-2008 National Fellowship Recipients

I am a fourth year PhD candidate in the Department of Geography at UC Berkeley. My decision to return to graduate school was sparked by a desire to connect geographically focused academic inquiry with on the ground action through teaching and participatory research. I am committed to producing work that is methodologically rigorous and theoretically relevant, while at the same time engaging research questions with direct social change implications. I would like to take the opportunity of this interim report to sincerely thank the Society of Woman Geographers for its support in my pursuit of these goals.

My academic interests have been shaped by a commitment to social and economic justice and by my experiences living and working on California’s Central Coast, first in the nonprofit sector and later on a unionized organic farm. Here, vast agricultural landscapes and a vibrant sustainable agriculture community belie the inequities and exploitation faced by the immigrant workers whose labor fuels the region’s highly productive agro-food system. With these contradictions in mind, I decided to focus my academic studies on developing a better understanding of the dynamics underpinning ‘local’ agricultural production and tracing its connections to the ‘global economy’. In particular I am interested in the movements of agricultural commodities, people, and production systems across considerable geographical distances and the possibilities for improving incomes and working conditions for farm laborers under these circumstances.

These interests shaped a research trajectory which led me to focus on the role of certification and labeling programs in promoting ‘socially responsible’ agriculture, primarily through third party monitoring of labor practices. I situate this work at the intersection of critical studies on agricultural restructuring, governance, and labor and social movement organizing. Pre-dissertation research focused on the possibilities and limits of social certification and labeling as a strategy for governing production relations in California agriculture. Out of this research I have written two articles for publication in academic journals, one in press and another that has been accepted pending revision. In addition I presented analysis from my work at the 2007 AAG conference in San Francisco.

My dissertation project extends these lines of inquiry into the international arena, focusing on the fair trade system. Because my project examines regulatory systems and commercial networks that operate across considerable socio-spatial distances, I am developing a research program that necessarily engages multiple geographical scales and units of analysis. Accordingly, I will conduct interviews with certification actors at different locations in the fair trade network, from NGO representatives and fair trade activists, to commercial buyers, to producers and workers in Ecuador’s fair trade banana industry. Despite a growing body of research on fair trade, studies have not systematically considered how the system operates across different production systems and the majority of research has focused on small-scale independent producers. Through a study comparing the effects of fair trade certification on independent producer cooperatives with the effects of fair labor certification in plantation agriculture, I hope to address this gap in the current fair trade literature.

The Society of Woman Geographers’ fellowship has allowed me to take the fall semester off from teaching to concentrate on developing my dissertation prospectus, initiating fieldwork, and preparing two articles for publication. In November I attended a series of meetings focused on the establishment of a domestic fair trade program in the US, where I engaged in participatory research and established contacts for future research. In addition, the NSWG fellowship will enable a research trip to Ecuador during the spring semester. In April I will present a paper based on my research about domestic fair trade at the AAG conference in Boston.

My name is Caroline Chen and I am a Ph.D. student in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at UC Berkeley. I hold a Masters in Landscape Architecture from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Arts in the Practice of Art (Sculpture) and German Studies from UC Berkeley.

My research focuses on ways in which people use designed spaces in improvised or unexpected ways, with emphasis on the implications of such unintended use for landscape architects and planners. My dissertation, tentatively titled The Danceable City: Improvised Uses of Space by Niu Yangge Fan-Dancers within Beijing’s Urban System, examines unintended consequences of Beijing’s modernization for the everyday practices of Chinese female niu-yangge fan-dancers. My proposed research seeks to accomplish three tasks: (1). To map shifting dance locations within interstitial urban space by female niu yangge fan-dancing groups in Beijing in the past twenty years; (2). To determine what spatial constraints and opportunities these groups have encountered as Beijing urban planners “green” the city for the Olympics; and (3). To discover adaptations that female niu yangge fan-dancers have adopted in response to changes in urban form in order to continue their activities.

My research began in 2004 when I received a US Fulbright fellowship to go to China, just after I graduated from the Harvard School of Design. I stayed on in China to continue my research after the grant expired and only returned to the US to start my PhD program in 2006. This past summer in 2007, I returned to China to continue my fieldwork. The summer started off with a conference in southern China: I presented my work-to-date in a conference paper titled, Dancing in the Streets in Contemporary Beijing: Improvised Uses and Long-life Practices within the Urban System to the Pacific Rim Community Design Network. After the conference, I flew north to Beijing and recruited from Peking University, eight female undergraduate urban planning students who volunteered to help me collect data in exchange for learning research methods. Meeting weekly, we called ourselves the “Dance City Research Team” and descended upon the streets of Beijing at daybreak and after dinner to interview Chinese niu-yangge fan-dancers to interview them about their dancing practice. Dancing as a way to keep fit, to socialize with their friends and to lift their spirits, these women dance on a daily basis. With ages ranging from 58 to 84 years old, they are one segment of the Beijing population whose needs few people appear to consider when making plans for the new Beijing. We asked the dancers how modernizing changes in the city affect their dancing routine and recorded their stories. We eventually mapped the women’s migration across the city in search of suitable dancing spaces and uncovered a path that lead from underneath freeway overpasses, to parking lots, to sidewalks after road widening, construction of new housing or creation of new green spaces displaced their old dancing spaces. As a team, the Chinese students and I tested out questionnaires, revised awkward questions, and surveyed dancers all over the city; at the end of summer, we collected a total of 437 interviews. I am now in the process of translating and coding their responses.

Also while in Beijing this summer, I organized a three-person panel of China researchers for the Association of Asian Studies conference in Atlanta, GA in April, 2008. Our panel is titled: “Building, Greening and Beautifying Beijing: Beyond the Olympic Image.” I will be chairing this panel and my own paper is tentatively titled: “Dancing Beijing:” an Olympic Competition.

After returning to Berkeley in the fall of 2007, I continued with the second year of my coursework. The highlight, however, was being awarded the chance to program and organize the UC Berkeley Landscape Architecture Environmental Planning Department’s Colloquium “Everyday Spaces and the Bodies that Move Through Them,” a weekly, lecture series for scholars to share their work at the College of Environmental Design. I chose to focus this interdisciplinary lecture and discussion series on a similar theme as my dissertation: how people with agency use everyday spaces in unintended ways. By inviting scholars who study cultural and social landscapes from China, to Egypt, to Latin America, suburban America and San Francisco, I sought to open the floor for discussions of how people from different cultures have varying patterns and practices for using everyday space. I also tried to address this topic across scales: from the large scale effects of global warming on waterfront suburban houses to the human scale design of the chair that we sit down on everyday.

Lastly, this November, I had the great pleasure of meeting the Bay Area Chapter of the Society of Women Geographers in person after accepting co-chair Joanna Biggar’s invitation to attend Dianne Aigaki’s lecture on her botanical adventures in Tibet. At the gathering, I met many incredible women doing really interesting work. Nonna Cheatham sent me an Earthwatch publication as a follow-up to our conversation over cheese! It has been a great, memorable and productive year, filled with interactions with many inspiring people, places and experiences; I thank the Society of Women Geographers for making it even better.

I am a third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, where my primary academic focus is paleoclimatology, or the reconstruction of past environmental conditions. Central to my studies is also understanding how geographical work may be applied to real-life situations, which is why I have chosen to focus my dissertation work on reconstructing past drought conditions and examining how that data may be used for the purposes of water supply management and drought education projects.

My dissertation is entitled: ‘A multi-proxy investigation of paleo-drought in the Uinta Mountains, Utah with applications in water resource management’. The Uinta Mountains stretch East-West for about 200 kilometers in northern Utah and Colorado. Their importance for water resources in the western U.S. lies in the fact that this mountain range feeds the Green River, which is the principal tributary of the Colorado River, an invaluable and highly contested source of water in the West. My dissertation work consists of two basic parts: development of a circa 1,000-year record with annual precision of past droughts in the Uinta Mountains using dendrochronology or tree-ring analysis, and determination of periods of aridity in the Uinta Mountains over the last 13,000 years on timescales of decades, centuries, and Millennia using diatoms, which are highly-sensitive algae whose remains are preserved in lake sediments. Once these records are completed, they can be used to better understand natural water supply variability in the region, assess a reasonable ‘worst-case’ drought scenario, test the fidelity of models predicting future droughts under conditions of global warming, make water supply/forest/agriculture management decisions, and educate the general public, children in particular, about the causes and effects of drought. I am working closely on this project with Dr. Glen M. MacDonald in the Department of Geography at UCLA (my academic advisor, whose interests include the use of tree-rings and fossil pollen to reconstruct past environments) and also with Dr. Katrina A. Moser in the Department of Geography at the University of Western Ontario (who works with lake sediments to infer past environmental changes).

Since this summer, I have completed a significant portion of my tree-ring work. Although past droughts in the Uinta Mountains appear to have been similar in severity to those experienced in living memory (e.g., the ‘Dust Bowl’, the 1977 drought, and the recent, ongoing ‘Turn of the Century’ drought), they were much longer in duration, sometimes lasting many decades. In addition, ecologically sensitive trees at tree-line appear to be affected by summer drought in the Uintas. This Fall I also continued sampling a lake sediment core for diatom analysis, attended two conferences, was a teaching assistant and guest course lecturer, and began the initial process of starting non-profit organizations in the states of Utah and California aimed at disseminating drought education tools to elementary schools.

Background Statement:

I am currently a graduate student in Geography and Women’s Studies at Penn State University, where I am working on a dissertation project that combines my longstanding research interests in food systems and critical pedagogy. My past research and publications include work on rural identity and anarchist politics in Plainfield, Vermont, farm markets and landscape change in southern New Jersey, and post-military land use on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. I have also been involved in organizing conferences and workshops on the topic of alternative agriculture and food.

Dissertation Research:

Since July of 2007, while supported by the Society of Women Geographers Fellowship Program, I have been conducting fieldwork as part of my dissertation research project towards a PhD in Geography at Penn State University. This research involves an in-depth study of two “Edible Schoolyards” (school garden and cooking programs), one in Summerville, Nova Scotia, and the other in Berkeley, California. The study examines the ability of these programs to motivate children to make behavioral changes in their eating habits, looking particularly at the ways in which motivation can be impacted by cultural, economic, and racial difference. The research focuses on how garden and cooking programs work materially, and differentially, to bring forth a variety of visceral reactions and sensations that can have an impact on the choices that children make about food.

I spent July through September conducting interviews with a variety of people associated with a school garden and cooking program in Summerville, Nova Scotia. This included teachers and staff at the school, dietitians and nutritionists, former students, parents, food activists, and community leaders. During this time, I also volunteered at the school, supervising children in the garden and kitchen. In addition, I conducted a number of data-generating activities with students in their classrooms. These activities included focus groups with a number of the 6th grade students. In addition, I created a document and presentation that explained my research to school children and visitors.

In October, I left Nova Scotia and traveled to Berkeley, California where my second research site/school is located. From October through December, I conducted interviews with teachers and staff at the school, parents and teachers, and also food activists in the community. Beyond interviews, I was similarly involved in volunteer, participant observation opportunities at the school site. This included working to set up and co-lead cooking classes and garden classes. I also conducted a number of data-generating activities with students at the school, including peer-led interviews and letter writing. In addition, I developed and presented to the school a short presentation on my research.

During this 5-month period, I have also conducted a fair amount of textual research, including internet-based research of local papers, websites, and blog sites that deal with issues of food justice, community and school gardens, and other food-related activities. This research serves as background data, which will help me to situate the particular school sites within a broader framework of food activism and politics.

December concludes the fieldwork portion of my research. In January of 2008, my fieldwork towards my dissertation will be complete, and I will move on to the data processing and analysis stage of my dissertation. This includes the transcription of interview data, and the coding of interview transcripts and participant observation journal notes. I will present on some preliminary findings of this research in the beginning of February. By March of 2008, I hope to begin the write up stage of my dissertation. In April of 2008, I will present on more of the findings of my research at the Association of American Geographers annual conference in Boston, MA.