[MUSIC PLAYING]
I'm Sarah Besky.
I'm an assistant professor
here in the Department
of Anthropology and
the Watson Institute.
My work sits at the
intersection of critical studies
of capitalism, what
we mean by nature,
and labor systems of
production and circulation.
And most of my work to
date has taken place
on tea plantations
in Northeast India.
And so I work on the
inclusion of plantations
into the fair trade system,
where we can kind of think
about the plantation as a kind
of colonially rooted system
of production and circulation.
But, it's kind of been brought
to sit unproblematically
next to your local produce, or
you organic, or your free range
eggs.
A lot of my research
asks how a plantation
can be made palatable in
ethical trade circles.
And what I have benn I found
the most inspiring thing
about being at Watson
is being pushed
to kind of provide more answers
to those social problems.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
