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

“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. Subscribe and listen to Green Dreamer in any podcast app or read on for the episode transcript. (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