Agrarian Change Seminar Series

Online webinar & in-person seminar jointly organised by the Journal of Agrarian Change and UCL Institute of the Americas 

November 12 (Wednesday), 5:00– 7:00 p.m. (UK Time) (12:00 p.m. New York | 2:00 p.m. Buenos Aires | 7:00 p.m. Central Africa | 10:30 p.m. Delhi).

Pesticides are at the core of industrial agriculture. As synthetic chemicals pervasive in contemporary socio-ecologies, they constitute one of the primary agents of global change. This presentation introduces the concept of ‘agrarian waterscapes’ as an analytic for tracing the dialectical relationship between agrarian change and socio-water environment, using pesticide exposure and disruption in a tropical wetland as an entry point. Agrarian waterscapes offer a framework for examining the historical and geographical co-production of water and society, linking agrarian trajectories and biochemical and physical processes. The contribution is grounded in 18 months of fieldwork in Costa Rica between 2018 and 2025. It focused on Diquís Delta in the Southern Pacific of Costa Rica, which combined ethnographic research in a coastal mangrove with pesticide monitoring and bioassays of a tropical native bivalve mollusk Anadara tuberculosa to evaluate the health of the ecosystem using this native bioindicator. Drawing on interdisciplinary mixed methods, Soledad argues that pesticide residues are more than the endpoint of pesticide lifecycles. Pesticide residues reflect the many tensions of pesticide regulation across and within the state; the continuity, expansion, and transformation of plantations; and the material, subjective, and institutional reach of the chemicalization of tropical agriculture.

About the presenter:

Soledad Castro-Vargas is a postdoctoral researcher in the Economic Geography Group at the Department of Geography of the University of Zurich, Switzerland. She holds a PhD in Environmental Science and Technology from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) of the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. Her research focuses on plantations, pesticides, and waterscapes from an interdisciplinary perspective, integrating theoretical frameworks and methods from political ecology, critical agrarian studies, and tropical ecotoxicology.

The seminar will be livestreamed via Zoom, and the online audience will be able to ask questions, but we cannot guarantee full hybrid functionality. The Zoom link will be sent to registered participants before the event.

This seminar is part of the Agrarian Change Seminar Series. For queries, contact  aqs.jac@gmail.com

Chaired by Enrique Castanon Ballivian