Dr. Julie Guthman, Associate Professor of Community Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, USA. Julie s health related-research employs political economy, political ecology and science studies perspectives on food production, food seurity and bodily health. Julie is on the Executive Committee of the University of California’s Multicampus Research Program on Food and the Body.
Julie Guthman holds a BA in Sociology from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and a Masters of Business Administration and a PhD in Geography from the University of California at Berkeley. She has published extensively on contemporary activist efforts to transform the way food is produced, distributed, and consumed, with a particular focus on organic agriculture, voluntary food labels, community food security, farm-to-school programs, and alternative food more generally. She developed an interest in health geography when she noted how critics of industrial food were invoking the problem of obesity. She is currently finishing up a book manuscript (University of California Press) that discusses what is being left out of the current conversation about good food and obesity, including the probable role of environmental toxins in contributing to obesity. Her previous book, Agrarian Dreams: the Paradox of Organic Farming in California (University of California, 2004), won the 2007 Frederick H. Buttel Award for Outstanding Scholarly Achievement from the Rural Sociological Society and the 2009 Donald Q. Innis Award from the rural geography specialty group of the Association of American Geographers.
Updated: July 2010
Health and Medical Geography 