Latvia’s Tomato Rebellion: Nested Environmental Justice and Returning Eco-Sociality in the Post-Socialist Eu Countryside

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the University of Latvia project for the invitation to collaborate, and to Dace Dzenovska, Hadley Renkin, and two anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts. A previous version of this paper was presented at the CEU ActJust Earth Day forum “Occupy Earth” in April 2012.

Notes

¹ All names have been changed.

² As defined by Steger et al., “environmental justice is about the distribution of environmental harms and benefits, and access to and consideration in procedures dictating their distribution” (Steger 2007, 10). A more thorough discussion of environmental justice is given below.

³ This ruling came after the Latvian Ministry of Agriculture working group came up with its proposed legislative changes (see Conclusion).

⁴ Dāvids, personal communication, 28 October 2012.

⁵ Here I am following Cohen’s concept of being on the margins of the margins as a gay, black, AIDS victim. Cohen, Cathy J. 1999. The Boundaries of Blackness: Aids and the Breakdown of Black Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

⁶ Dāvids, personal communication, 28 October 2012.

⁷ Sarma, personal communication, 28 October 2012.

⁸ Seeds of officially registered varieties must be certified as seed. See Aistara 2011.

⁹ Daiga, interview, 1 September 2011.

¹⁰ Daiga, interview, 1 September 2011.

¹¹ Dāvids, personal communication, 28 October 2012.

¹² Baiba, personal communication, 30 October 2012.

¹³ Dāvids, personal communication, 28 October 2012.

¹⁴ Harijs, email communication, 25 February 2012.

¹⁵ Baiba, personal communication, 30 October 2012.

¹⁶ Baiba, personal communication, 30 October 2012.

¹⁷ Dāvids, personal communication, 28 October 2012.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Guntra A. Aistara

Guntra A. Aistara received her PhD from the School of Natural Resources and Environment from the University of Michigan. Her research is in environmental anthropology on the themes of organic agriculture movements, agrobiodiversity and seed sovereignty, and the political ecology of free trade agreements. She is Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy at the Central European University in Budapest.