🎧 Bosnian Home Gardens and Foodways with Ashley Glenn and Dr. Andrew Flachs
Tune in to the latest episode of the Foodie Pharmacology podcast to learn how home gardens support local social networks and economies.
In this episode of Foodie Pharmacology, we discuss the vital role of home gardens in diverse economies and social reproduction. Our guests are scholars Andrew Flachs and Ashley Glenn. Andrew, an anthropologist and agrarian studies expert, talks about how gardens support resilient economies in areas with limited formal economic activity, and the critical role of women in these systems. Ashley, an Ethnobotanist, examines the diversity of these gardens and their role in preserving social institutions in difficult economic scenarios. The episode focuses on the role of gardens in fueling social reproduction: keeping social institutions going even as other aspects of the economy would fragment them. We explore sustainable agriculture, botany, and anthropology, understanding the value and potential of home gardens in our economies and ecosystems.
About Andrew
Dr. Andrew Flachs researches how we shape and are shaped by the environment, from the scale of the farm field to our own microbiomes. He earned his PhD from Washington University in St. Louis in April 2016 and is currently an associate professor of anthropology at Purdue University. His work in South India, Eastern Europe, and the American Midwest investigates ecological knowledge and technological change from Cleveland urban gardens to Indian GM cotton fields.
Andrew's research has been supported by groups including the Department of Education, the National Geographic Society, the American Institute of Indian Studies, and the Social Science Research Council, while his writing on food and agriculture has been published in venues including American Anthropologist, Nature Plants, and the Journal of Peasant Studies, as well as public venues including Sapiens, Salon, and the National Geographic Magazine. Andrew's work has been recognized by eight international awards, including most recently as a finalist for the Society for Economic Anthropology Kate Browne Creativity in Research Award and the International Convention of Asia Scholars’ Book Prize for his 2019 book, Cultivating Knowledge: Biotechnology, Sustainability, and the Human Cost of Cotton Capitalism. Outside of academia, he is a dad joke enthusiast, cook, cyclist, and musician. Learn more about his work at his website: www.andrewflachs.com
About Ashley
Ashley Glenn studies botany and anthropology through traditional food and medicinal systems. She has a Bachelor of Science from Colorado State University and is currently a PhD candidate in Ethnobotany at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, and a research specialist at the Missouri Botanical Garden. As an ethnobotanist, she has published extensively on medicinal plants in northern Peru, worked to understand the structure of Midwest praries, and supported home gardens around the world through the Missouri Botanical Garden Sacred Seeds Program. Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, her current research focus explores the foodways of Bosnian refugees, about 70,000 of whom settled in St. Louis after the Bosnian war.
Her free time is spent in her kitchen and garden, in a ceramics art studio, and exploring the forests and rivers of Missouri.
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Yours in health, Dr. Quave
Cassandra L. Quave, Ph.D. is a scientist, author, speaker, podcast host, wife, mother, explorer, and professor at Emory University School of Medicine. She teaches college courses and leads a group of research scientists studying medicinal plants to find new life-saving drugs from nature. She hosts the Foodie Pharmacology podcast and writes the Nature’s Pharmacy newsletter to share the science behind natural medicines. To support her effort, consider a paid or founding subscription, with founding members receiving an autographed 1st edition hardcover copy of her book, The Plant Hunter.