Hanna Garth | Puerto Rican Artisan Fishers’ Visions of Sovereignty

Name: Hanna Garth | Puerto Rican Artisan Fishers’ Visions of Sovereignty
Start: 2026-01-27T12:00:00-05:00
End: 2026-01-27T13:15:00-05:00
Location: Aaron Burr Hall, Room 216 (open to students, faculty, visiting scholars and staff)

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Lecture

Tue, Jan 27, 2026

12 PM – 1:15 PM EST (GMT-5)

Aaron Burr Hall, Room 216 (open to students, faculty, visiting scholars and staff)

Princeton, NJ 08544, United States

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Drawing on ethnographic research with Puerto Rican artisan fishers since 2021, this talk analyzes different ways that fishers make sense of Puerto Rico’s status as a US Commonwealth. The talk focuses on their diverse visions of future forms of food sovereignty as they relate to the island’s political status.

ABOUT OUR GUEST SPEAKER

Hanna Garth's (Ph.D., University of California-Los Angeles) research is focused on the systems and processes that impede access to basic needs for marginalized people. She has specifically analyzed problems with food access and the inequities of the global industrial food system, as well as the ways people struggle to overcome structural inequalities and prejudice in their attempts to access basic needs. Garth studies these questions in Latin America and the Caribbean and among Black and Latinx communities in the United States. Her first book, Food in Cuba: The Pursuit of a Decent Meal (2020), was based on ethnographic research with 22 families in Santiago de Cuba. The book reveals how families respond to shifts in food access in Cuba’s rapidly changing post‐Soviet context. While most families can access enough food to prevent hunger, they struggle to assemble what they call “a decent meal” that meets local standards of quality and cultural appropriateness. Food in Cuba analyzes how food access affects individual and household stress, as well as local understandings of good governance, cultural sustainability and social value. Garth has also published over 25 peer reviewed book chapters and articles in flagship journals such as Social Science and Medicine, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, American Anthropologist, and Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology.

Hanna Garth's second book, Food Justice Undone: Lessons for Building a Better Movement, is based on 12 years of ethnographic research with nonprofit, city and county organizations in South Central Los Angeles. This project analyzes the food justice movement in South Central Los Angeles. The book is forthcoming with University of California Press expected in Spring 2026. Learn more.

DISCUSSANT

Ulla D. Berg, Associate Professor, Latino & Caribbean Studies and Anthropology, Rutgers University

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology.

This event is open to students, faculty, visiting scholars and staff.

Sponsorship of an event does not constitute institutional endorsement of external speakers or views presented.

Where

Aaron Burr Hall, Room 216 (open to students, faculty, visiting scholars and staff)

Princeton, NJ 08544, United States

Speakers

Hanna Garth

Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Princeton University

Hanna Garth is a sociocultural and medical anthropologist focused on the anthropology of food. Garth’s scholarship is broadly focused on the ways in which marginalized communities struggle to overcome structural inequalities and prejudice as they attempt to access basic needs. Garth studies these questions in Latin America and the Caribbean, and among Black and Latinx communities in the United States. She has focused on the ways in which the global industrial food system affects food access inequalities. Her first book "Food in Cuba: The Pursuit of a Decent Meal" (Stanford University Press, 2020), is based on ethnographic research in Santiago de Cuba, the island's second largest city. Her research reveals the ways that even food distribution systems, which ostensibly supply sufficient nutritional needs, can also have detrimental effects on individual and community wellbeing. Her next book project will draw on ethnographic research she has conducted on the Los Angeles Food Justice Movement from 2008-2021. This project analyzes the work of organizations that are trying to improve access to healthy food in South Los Angeles. Based on this work she co-edited the volume Black Food Matters: Racial Justice in the Wake of Food Justice (University of Minnesota Press, 2020). She is also conducting new research in South Los Angeles on emergency food programming during and after COVID-19, and developing future work on fish and seafood in the Caribbean.

Prior to arriving at Princeton she was an assistant professor in Anthropology at UC San Diego from 2016-2021. She received her PhD in Anthropology from UCLA, an MPH from Boston University, and was a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Irvine in Anthropology.

Hosted By

Program in Latin American Studies | View More Events
Co-hosted with: Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies