Kara Anderson

Kara Anderson is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto. Her research unfolds at the intersection of Feminist political ecology and Indigenous geographies to understand how food insecurity, and larger processes of territorial dispossession and resource scarcity, force Maya women to increasingly compromise their wellbeing in their social reproductive work throughout the Guatemalan Highlands. Drawing on the Indigenous, feminist epistemology of cuerpo-territorio (body-land), Kara's research considers how solutions to food insecurity, and territorial dispossession more broadly, must address the gendered nature of territorial dispossession, which leverages women's physical and emotional health alongside the land and resources they manage.

Kara's doctoral research explores how Maya women's groups throughout the Guatemalan Highlands mobilize around their struggles with food insecurity to promote a return to an ancestral farming system known as milpa. Drawing on oral histories, ethnography and focus groups, Kara explores how women's return to milpa counters gendered mechanisms of colonial violence by promoting healing for both women and the lands they manage. Ultimately, Kara’s research considers how questions of food security remain gendered issues that must take women’s wellbeing and social reproductive capacity just as seriously, if not more, as agrarian productivity.

Publications

Maya women, non-traditional agriculture and “care” : Rethinking feminist geographies of “care” from the Guatemalan Highlands

Supervisor

Ryan Isakson