Tatiana Schreiber, PhD

Tatiana Shreiber Tatiana Schreiber, PhD
Email Tatiana

Curriculum Vitae (PDF 50K)

Personal Statement

I have been interested in the connection between humans and our environment since I was kid who liked to play in the woods, in the mud, among the blackberries, and in the middle of a creek… I later became a gardener, and then fascinated with the ways we humans interact with the land through food and agriculture.

My undergraduate work was in Anthropology, Biology, Rural Sociology and Nutrition, and then, after a long series of side trips, including some 20 years working as a journalist in public radio, my graduate work in Environmental Studies at Antioch has been in the area of Environmental Anthropology. My fieldwork was with small-scale organic farmers, most of whom are Maya Indians, who produce coffee, cacao and tropical fruits in the cloud forest highlands and rainforest lowland regions of Chiapas, Mexico. In particular I examined the relationship between the organizational pluralism of farmer cooperatives and economic, ecological and cultural sustainability and resilience.

I suggest that organizations with greater religious, ideological, ethnic and language diversity may provide a more stable long-term structure than less plural organizations, with regard to ecological integrity, economic viability, and cultural survival in these times of globalization. The dissertation includes a “treatment” for a radio program, developed in collaboration with Mexican farmers, that is designed to represent their values and beliefs (such as their ecological world-views), and their work and aspirations to those who might consume the coffee and other products they have cultivated.

I hope now to produce that radio program, as well as a book and website which will support the work of these farmer organizations. In addition to my academic work, I continue to work as a journalist, and am also a small-scale farmer selling organic vegetables from my farmstand in Vermont. One of my interests in being a CTEC Associate is in fostering connections between small farmers in the U.S. and in tropical regions for mutually beneficial projects as all such farmers face similar pressures in their efforts to maintain their way of life and protect their habitats.

Last Updated: 1/6/12