Junior Researcher

Hart Feuer
 
 
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"Pre-industrial Ecological Modernization in Agriculture? The Role of Socionatural Hybrids in Cambodia"

There is a growing concern that the technological regime of agricultural production and food consumption implicit in the modernizationist ideal of development is not socially or ecologically sustainable. This research focuses on how developing countries with a predominantly pre-modern agricultural sector explore divergent food economies in light of domestic conditions and increasingly divided international debates about agricultural development.

In a poor country like Cambodia, the rapidly growing interest in and uptake of agroecological cultivation techniques, natural products, and ethical consumerism presents a particularly good opportunity to investigate the dynamics of ecological modernization embedded in pre-industrial sociotechnical evolution. The research addresses the emerging social acceptance and market embeddedness of organic rice, palm sugar, and traditional medicine, as well as “traditional” agri-products, including liquors, preserved products, and others. For this study, these products are referred to as socionatural hybrids, a term coined by Latour (1993) to denote physical manifestations imbued with the social, ethical and ecological processes that went into their making. The primary research question is, whether the growing preeminence of socionatural hybrids and their concomitant production, marketing and consumer tendencies in Cambodia since the mid 1990s are indicative of a novel trajectory for agricultural development or whether they are unrelated and distinct shifts within a constraining (industrial) social and technological regime?

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Department ZEF C: Department of Ecology and Resource Management
Research areas - Economics and Governance
- New Technologies
Research countries - Cambodia
Research topic Alternatives to industrialization; Green marketing; Ethical consumerism
Affiliation of research ZEFc, Department of Ecology and Natural Resource Management
Private website http://www.hartfeuer.net
Partners Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture (CEDAC), Medecine de la Nature, National Center for Traditional Medicine (Cambodia), Development and Appropriate Technology (DATe)
Degrees MPhil, Development Studies, University of Oxford
BA Economics and Business, Lafayette College
BA German Studies, Lafayette College
Financially supported by Jack Kent Cooke Foundation (Graduate Scholarship Division)
Publications

Feuer, Hart N. 2008. Sustainable Agricultural Techniques and Performance-Oriented Empowerment: An Actor-Network Theory Approach to CEDAC Agricultural and Empowerment Programmes in Cambodia. MPhil Thesis. University of Oxford, England,
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Further Information: www.hartfeuer.net/academic/FeuerMPhilThesis.pdf

Feuer, Hart N. 2007. Freedom as Familiar Markets: Negotiating the Influences of Globalisation on the Marketplace.
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Feuer, Hart N. 2007. Pathologies of Expanding Moral Authority in the United Nations Development System.
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Feuer, Hart N. 2006. Paradigm Inertia in the U.S. National Household Travel Survey (NHTS).
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Further Information: www.hartfeuer.net/academic/FeuerParadigmInertiaNHTS06.pdf

Feuer, Hart N. 2006. Fermentation, Productivity, and Society: Beer and Kombucha in a Modern, Global, and Sterile World.
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Feuer, Hart N. 2006. Technology Transfer and Sustainable Development: Implications for Local Culture, Rachme Village, Jordan. Capstone Project. Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, Israel,
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Further Information: www.hartfeuer.net/academic/FeuerSustainableTechnologyRachme06.pdf

Feuer, Hart N. 2006. Technology Transfer and Sustainable Development: Implications for Local Culture, Rachme Village, Jordan. Capstone Project. Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, Israel,

Feuer, Hart N. 2004. Die Geschichte der Umweltbewegung Deutschlands und der Aufstieg der Zeitgenössischen Umweltpolitik im späten 20. Jahrhundert.
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Further Information: www.hartfeuer.net/academic/FeuerGermanyEnvironmentalMovement.pdf

Feuer, Hart N. 2004. Social Capital, Market Interaction, and Income-generation Capacity: An Analysis of 2 Semi-rural Villages in Cambodia. BA Thesis. Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, USA,
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Further Information: www.hartfeuer.net/academic/FeuerThesisFinal.pdf

Feuer, Hart N. and Yaakov Garb. 2004. The lock-in of major standard crops and the prospects of underutilized alternative species: A technological systems and institutions analysis.
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Additionals, Curriculum Vitae
and Downloads

Feuer Hart - CV 05-11-08.doc
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