Restructuring Food Production in Ghor Al-Mazraa of the Southern Jordan Valley
Public lecture in English
Joint Ifpo/CBRL Insights Series ‘Perspectives on the Modern and Contemporary Arab World’
إعادة هيكلة إنتاج الغذاء في غور المزرعة من الاغوار الجنوبية، محاضرة للباحثة لوسين تامينيان
Abstract
The Jordan Valley is considered the “food basket” of Jordan. Its fertile soils and high temperatures all year round are utilized to produce high-quality and high-return products (mainly vegetables and fruits) outside the growing season elsewhere. Though Jordan is a food deficit country – it imports above 90% of its cereal food consumption and 80–90% of its animal feed requirements – fruits and vegetables were Jordan’s third largest merchandise exports in 2012, after textiles and fertilizers, despite the fact that the sector is affected by the scarcity of irrigation water and the overuse of groundwater, and most recently by the closure of regional markets.
Since the 1980’s, the Southern Jordan Valley witnessed major transformations that benefitted big landlords and led to the emergence of “modern agribusinesses” that employ high technological solutions, to the impoverishment of local farmers, and most recently to the development of a “cultural economy,” an economy that assumes that local cultural resources are the “key to improving the social and economic well-being of rural areas.” The lecturer will address these transformations focusing on their impact on labour, landownership, and the “urbanization” of Ghor al-Mazraa.
The Lecturer
Lucine Taminian holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan, an M.A. in Social Anthropology from the Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, Yarmouk University and a B.A. in English Language and Linguistics from Damascus University.
She has conducted extensive field research in Jordan on food production and in Yemen on expressive cultures. She was the senior researcher for the project The Oral Histories of Iraqis Living in Diaspora. She is the editor of three books on Yemen and the author of several articles published in refereed journals and edited books. She has taught anthropology at universities in the USA, Yemen and Lebanon.
Lucine is the Resident Director and Senior Researcher in Residence at The Academic Research Institute in Iraq, a board member of The Arab Council for Social Sciences, and a member of the advisor committee for the World Congress for Middle Studies.
Date and Time
Monday, 11th December 2017 at 6 pm
Location
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