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Orfalea Center Graduate Students
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Noa Cykman
Departments
Sociology
Research Clusters
Affiliation Period
8/2023 - 6/2024
Research Project
Agroecology as a Way of Life: Sovereignty and Conservation at a Settlement of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) in Brazil
Research Description
Advancing the transition of food systems towards Terra Vista is a settlement of the Landless Workers' Movement in Brazil (MST) that initiated agroecological agroforestry in 2000, and has since made progress in restoring the local ecosystem and building food sovereignty. I will investigate how this community experiencing oppression integrates their struggle for human liberation to the restoration of an agroecosystem, and what can be learned from this example to respond to urgent global problems. The novel methodology of multispecies ethnography will allow including more-than-human agency in the data produced. I will follow a cacao bean from seed to chocolate to map all its relationships through participant observation and interviews, supported by a theoretical framework connecting relational sociology, environmental humanities, and agroecology, a field that includes natural and social sciences, social movements, and agricultural practices. The study will make a contribution to the fields of agroecology, Indigenous studies, and multispecies sociology.
Research Interests
Environmental humanities; Agroecology; Ecosystem restoration; Food systems transition; Relational sociology; Social movements; Multispecies ethnography.
Orfalea Center Productions
Multimedia Report & Documentary: Agroecology as a way of life in a settlement of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil
Multimedia Report: Chocolate and Sovereignty in Bahia, Brazil
Student Bio
Noa Cykman is a Fulbright scholar and Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her work focuses on utopia, regenerative agriculture, ecological restoration, and multispecies societies. She is particularly curious about how we may (re-)establish relationships of kinship and reciprocity between people and forests. Towards that end, her doctoral research is an ethnography conducted with the community of Terra Vista, settled by the Landless Workers' Movement (MST) in Bahia.