{"product_id":"heirloom-seeds-and-their-keepers-virginia-d-nazarea-9780816531639","title":"Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers: Marginality and Memory in the Conservation of Biological Diversity","description":"\u003cb\u003eFarmers and gardeners have long appreciated\u003c\/b\u003e a wide variety of plants and have nurtured them for meals, healing, and exchange. But diversity too often has been surrendered to monocultures of fields and spirits, predisposing much of modern agriculture to uniformity and, consequently, vulnerability. Today it is primarily at the individual level--such as growing and saving a strange old bean variety or a curious-looking gourd--that any lasting conservation actually takes place. \u003cp\u003eAs scientists grapple with the erosion of genetic diversity of crops and their wild relatives, old-timey farmers and gardeners continue to save, propagate, and pass on folk varieties and heirloom seeds. Virginia Nazarea focuses on the role of these seedsavers in the perpetuation of diversity. She thoughtfully examines the framework of scientific conservation and argues for the merits of everyday conservation--one that is beyond programmatic design. Whether considering small-scale rice and sweet potato farmers in the Philippines or participants in the Southern Seed Legacy and Introduced Germplasm from Vietnam in the American South, she explores roads not necessarily less traveled but certainly less recognized in the conservation of biodiversity.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThrough characters and stories that offer a wealth of insights about human nature and society, \u003ci\u003eHeirloom Seeds and Their Keepers\u003c\/i\u003e helps readers more fully understand why biodiversity persists when there are so many pressures for it not to. The key, Nazarea explains, is in the sovereign spaces seedsavers inhabit and create, where memories counter a culture of forgetting and abandonment engendered by modernity. A book about theory as much as practice, it profiles these individuals, who march to their own beat in a world where diversity is increasingly devalued as the predictability of mass production becomes the norm.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eHeirloom Seeds and Their Keepers\u003c\/i\u003e offers a much-needed, scientifically researched perspective on the contribution of seedsaving that illustrates its critical significance to the preservation of both cultural knowledge and crop diversity around the world. It opens new conversations between anthropology and biology, and between researchers and practitioners, as it honors conservation as a way of life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Virginia D. Nazarea\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0816531633\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780816531639\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Arizona Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 10\/15\/2014\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 190\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.60lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.40d","brand":"Virginia D. Nazarea","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":43926480617727,"sku":"9780816531639","price":29.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/products\/img_1cb4166a-ebd7-4b39-97ac-7f8bafecc3bc.jpg?v=1681083306","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/heirloom-seeds-and-their-keepers-virginia-d-nazarea-9780816531639","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}