Sarah Besky

Sarah Besky is a Ph.D. Candidate in Cultural Anthropology. Her dissertation, “The Darjeeling Distinction: An Ethnographic Study of Changing Agricultural Practice, Regimes of Value, and Visions of Justice,” asks how ideas about the “empowerment” of farmers, the connections of products to places, and the promotion of universal social and ecological standards, have informed the ways in which tea workers, brokers, and consumers construct both a product, fair trade organic tea, and a place, the Darjeeling district of West Bengal. Since she began her fieldwork in February 2008, Sarah has followed debates about environmental and social justice from fair-trade tea plantations and cooperatives, to international NGOs, and into the increasingly tense struggle of ethnic Nepalis in the region to form an independent state, Gorkhaland. She has become interested in how debates about labor standards, rights to place, and the legacy of colonialism have informed both the production of boutique tea and the revitalization of the Gorkhaland movement. Ultimately, Sarah is investigating the changing meaning of “empowerment” in an era of trade liberalization, the retreat of the state from environmental and social welfare, and increased consumer consciousness about the conditions of food production.

Sarah holds a B.A. in Anthropology and Asian Culture and Religious Experience from Connecticut College, and she has been an Associate Lecturer at UW-Madison for “Introduction to East Asian Studies.” Her extracurricular hobbies include marathon running, shopping at yard sales, cooking, and knitting. She will continue her research, both in Darjeeling and in Kolkata, through the summer of 2010.