Dr. Pablo Lapegna obtained his Licenciatura in Sociology from the University of Buenos Aires, and his PhD in Sociology from the State University of New York (Stony Brook). He teaches and writes about social movements, environmental issues, critical agrarian studies, and global processes, with a focus on South America and using qualitative methods (see "Research" below for publications). He holds a joint appointment with the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Institute.
His book Soybeans and Power: Genetically Modified Crops, Environmental Politics, and Social Movements in Argentina (Oxford University Press, 2016) investigates the sweeping expansion of genetically modified soybeans and the ways in which rural populations think, feel, and act when affected by environmental problems and quotidian hardships. Drawing on ethnography and focusing on northern Argentina, the book scrutinizes mechanisms of demobilization and the decline of contention in cases of agrochemical exposure. Soybeans and Power has won the 2017 Best Book Award of the Sociology of Development Section, American Sociological Association, and it has been published in Spanish as La Argentina Transgénica: De la Resistencia a la Adaptación, una Etnografía de las Poblaciones Campesinas (Siglo XXI Editores, Buenos Aires, 2019). See media coverage here, here, here, here, here, and here.
He is a member of the editorial boards of Qualitative Sociology and the Journal of Agrarian Change. At the University of Georgia, he co-organizes the Georgia Workshop on Culture, Power, and History at the Department of Sociology, and Dirty History, an interdisciplinary workshop on agriculture, the environment, and capitalism. He also leads the Latin American Sustainable Agriculture Initiative at LACSI. He is a faculty affiliate with the Sustainability Certificate Program and the Center for Integrative Conservation Research.
Dr. Lapegna is working on a new project about genetically engineered crops and herbicides in Argentina, in collaboration with Dr. Johana Kunin (CONICET and Universidad de San Martín, UNSAM, Argentina). This project focuses on the entanglements between people, plants, and pesticides to address a set of questions: How do farmers reconcile the economic benefits afforded by genetically engineered crops with the claims about negative environmental impacts and the health risks of pesticide exposure? What do contemporary agriculture and its dependency on pesticides reveal about the promises and perils of technology in the Anthropocene? How do the actions of non-humans (such as pesticides, soils, weeds, and the climate) de-centers humans in our understanding of the world and its futures? Understanding farmers on their own terms and dwelling on their ambivalent views of pesticides, this project bridges interdisciplinary scholarship on toxicity, care practices, narratives of justification, non-human actors, and morality and ethics. A publication about this project can be found here.
Click here to watch an interview at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Lima, Peru (In Spanish)
Education
- Ph.D., Sociology, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 2011
- M.A., Sociology, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 2007
- Licenciatura en Sociología (BA in Sociology), University of Buenos Aires, 2001
Research
Selected Publications
- Sobering, Katherine and Pablo Lapegna. Forthcoming. “Alternative Organizational Survival: A Comparison of Two Worker-Recuperated Businesses in Buenos Aires, Argentina.” Social Problems.
- Lapegna, Pablo, Maritza Paredes and Renata Motta. Forthcoming. “Demobilization in Latin America.” In Federico M. Rossi (ed.), The Oxford Handbook on Latin American Social Movements (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
- Lapegna, Pablo and Tamara Perelmuter. 2020. “Genetically Modified Crops and Seed/Food Sovereignty in Argentina: Scales and States in the Contemporary Food Regime.” Journal of Peasant Studies 47(4): 700-719
- Hanson, Rebecca and Pablo Lapegna. 2018. “Popular Participation and Governance in Kirchner’s Argentina and Chávez’s Venezuela: Recognition, Incorporation, and Supportive Mobilisation.” Journal of Latin American Studies 50(1): 153-182.
- Lapegna, Pablo. 2017. “The Political Economy of the Agro-Export Boom Under the Kirchners: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in Argentina.” Journal of Agrarian Change 17(2): 313-329. Disponible en español aquí: https://www.clacso.org.ar/libreria-latinoamericana/libro_detalle.php?id_libro=1415
- Lapegna, Pablo. 2017. “Agricultural Boom, Subnational Mobilization, and Variations of Violence in Argentina.” In Tina Hilgers and Laura Macdonald (eds.) Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean: Subnational Structures, Institutions, and Clientelism. New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Lapegna, Pablo. 2016. Soybeans and Power: Genetically Modified Crops, Environmental Politics, and Social Movements in Argentina. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Otero, Gerardo and Pablo Lapegna. 2016. “Transgenic Crops in Latin America: Expropriation, Negative Value, and the State.” Journal of Agrarian Change 16(4): 665-674. Introduction to the special symposium "Neoliberalism and Transgenic Crops in Latin America." Disponible en español aquí: http://www.estudiosdeldesarrollo.mx/ecd/revista_ecd.html
- Lapegna, Pablo. 2016. “Neoliberal politics and moral riots in Bolivia’s ‘Black February’: Understanding the transition to post-neoliberalism in South America.” E-Symposium 6(2): 1-11 (Publication of the International Sociological Association).
- Lapegna, Pablo. 2016. “Genetically Modified Soybeans, Agrochemical Exposure, and Everyday Forms of Peasant Collaboration in Argentina.” Journal of Peasant Studies 43(2): 517-536.
- Lapegna, Pablo. 2015. “Popular Demobilization, Agribusiness Mobilization, and the Agrarian Boom in Post-Neoliberal Argentina.” Journal of World-Systems Research 21(1): 69-87.
- Lapegna, Pablo. 2014. “Global Ethnography and Genetically Modified Crops in Argentina: On Adoptions, Resistances, and Adaptations.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 43(2): 202-227.
- Lapegna, Pablo. 2014. “The problem with ‘cooptation’.” States, Power, and Societies 20(1): 7-9
- Lapegna, Pablo. 2013. “Social Movements and Patronage Politics: Processes of Demobilization and Double Pressure.” Sociological Forum 28(4 ): 842-863.
- Lapegna, Pablo. 2013. “The Expansion of Transgenic Soybeans and the Killing of Indigenous Peasants in Argentina.” Societies without Borders: Human Rights and the Social Sciences, 8(2): 291-308.
- Lapegna, Pablo and Javier Auyero. 2012. “Democratic Processes, Patronage Politics, and Contentious Collective Action in El Alto, Bolivia.” In Hilgers, Tina (Ed.) Clientelism in Everyday Latin American Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Auyero, Javier, Pablo Lapegna and Fernanda Page Poma. 2010. “Patronage Politics and Contentious Collective Action: A Recursive Relationship.” Latin American Politics and Society 51(3):1-31.
- Lapegna, Pablo. 2009. “Ethnographers of the World… United? Current Debates on the Ethnographic Study of ‘Globalization’.” Journal of World-Systems Research XV(1): 3-24.
- Lapegna, Pablo and Santiago Canevaro. 2009. “Cruzando márgenes: segregación territorial y relaciones de poder en un barrio de Buenos Aires.” In Grimson, Alejandro, Cecilia Ferraudi Curto and Ramiro Segura (Eds.) La vida política en los barrios populares de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: Prometeo.
- Lapegna, Pablo. 2007. “Transgénicos, ‘desarrollo sustentable’ y (neo)liberalismo en Argentina.” In Mato, Daniel and Fermín Maldonado (Eds.) Cultura y transformaciones sociales en tiempos de globalización. Buenos Aires: CLACSO (Latin American Council of Social Sciences).
- Domínguez Diego, Pablo Lapegna, and Pablo Sabatino. 2006. “Un futuro presente: las luchas territoriales” Nómadas 24. Universidad Central-IESCO, Bogotá, Colombia.
- Lapegna, Pablo. 2005. “Transformaciones sociales y nuevas articulaciones agroalimentarias. Las Ferias Francas de la provincia de Misiones.” In Giarracca, Norma and Miguel Teubal (Eds.) El campo argentino en la encrucijada. Estrategias y resistencias sociales, ecos en la ciudad. Buenos Aires: Alianza.
- Domínguez, Diego, Pablo Lapegna and Pablo Sabatino. 2005. “Agriculturas en tensión en Colonia Loma Senes, provincia de Formosa.” In Giarracca, Norma and Miguel Teubal (Eds.) El campo argentino en la encrucijada. Estrategias y resistencias sociales, ecos en la ciudad. Buenos Aires: Alianza.
- Barbetta, Pablo N. and Pablo Lapegna. 2004. “Tierra y ciudadanía: un estudio comparativo entre el Movimiento Campesino de Santiago del Estero (Argentina) y la Federación Nacional Campesina (Paraguay).” In Giarracca, Norma and Bettina Levy (Eds.) Ruralidades Latinoamericanas. Identidades y luchas sociales. Buenos Aires: CLACSO (Latin American Council of Social Sciences).
- Lapegna, Pablo and Pablo Barbetta. 2001. “Cuando la protesta toma forma: los cortes de ruta en el Norte salteño.” In Giarracca, Norma (Ed.) La Protesta Social en la Argentina: Transformaciones económicas y crisis social en el interior del país. Buenos Aires: Alianza.