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Green Dreamer: Seeding change towards collective healing, sustainability, regeneration

348) Kregg Hetherington: The paradox of destroying lands in the name of social welfare

Green Dreamer: Seeding change towards collective healing, sustainability, regeneration

Kaméa Chayne

Earth Sciences, Philosophy, Society & Culture, Science

4.8694 Ratings

🗓️ 15 March 2022

⏱️ 48 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“This is what I call the agrobiopolitical paradox at the center of the modern agricultural state: Paraguay trying to push hard to get more soybeans out there and on the other hand trying to create institutions to protect people from all the soybeans that the left hand is putting in place.”

In this episode, we welcome Kregg Hetherington, Ph.D., who is a political anthropologist specializing in the environment, infrastructure, and the bureaucratic state. He is the author of The Government of Beans. Kregg's long-term ethnographic work in Paraguay chronicles how small farmers caught in a sweeping agrarian transition have experienced the country's halting transition to democracy, showing how activists create new ways of thinking and practicing government.

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(The musical offering in this episode is Debt by Luna Bec. The episode artwork is by Sara Mengual.)

Green Dreamer is an in(ter)dependent, community-powered podcast. If our work has inspired you, please consider reciprocating a gift of support to help sustain the show:  GreenDreamer.com/support

Transcript

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0:22.3

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donation at greendreamer.com slash support. It really means a lot to have you here and we're so

0:47.6

grateful for whatever form or level of support that you're able to share with us.

0:55.4

Hey, it's your host, Kamea, and this is Green Dreamer.

0:59.0

As a community-powered show, we do need your direct support to be able to keep this

1:03.3

interdependent podcast alive and continue to explore so many topics and perspectives

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sidelined by mainstream media.

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So if you're moved and inspired

1:12.6

by our conversations, you can reciprocate support starting from a gift of just $2 at

1:17.7

greendreamer.com slash support. For now, on to today's episode where we're speaking with Dr. Craig

1:24.1

Hetherington. And this is kind of the, what I call the agribiopolitical paradox at the center of the modern

1:32.3

agricultural state, where you've got the same institutions doing both of these things in

1:38.3

Paraguay, really trying to push hard to make everything possible to get more soybeans out there.

1:43.3

And on the other hand, trying to

1:45.5

create these institutions that are going to protect people from all the soybeans that the left

1:50.5

hand is putting in place. The author of The Government of Beans, Craig is a political

...

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