Martha McMahon

Martha McMahon’s current research interests lie in the area of food, farming, agri-food governance, food sovereignty, gender and food security, environmental sociology and feminist analysis, including ecological feminism.

She is currently investigating survival and other strategies local farmers use to make their farming work under challenging circumstances. She is also studying the relationship between changing public and private agri-food governance and the possibilities for alternative food networks. Her current research focus is on gender and environment, small-scale farming and local food.

While attending to social processes such as globalization, international trade and regulatory regimes, she describes her approach to sociology as critically reflective symbolic interactionism. This approach takes both actors' meanings and social constraints as being central in explaining social life. Thus, in doing sociology, she examines how social relationships, including those with the non-human world are reproduced, negotiated and transformed in the everyday meaningful interactions of people whether in bureaucracies, on farms, in their homes or in the courts or grocery stores.

Her book, Engendering Motherhood was awarded the 1996 American Sociological Association Sex and Gender Section Award for Distinguished Scholarship on Gender. She has been named as one of the most popular professors at UVic by Maclean's Magazine Report on Universities (2003 to 2006). Her current publications include pieces on gender and food security (2012), women organic farmers (2012) and food sovereignty (2012).

Students who work with Martha will have the opportunity to work on issues of local food and society including local food, environment, gender and food security, food sovereignty, animal welfare and social justice issues and ecological feminist projects and also to be involved with local food and farming organization.

Interests

• Food, agriculture and the local
• Agri-food governance
• Food sovereignty and food security
• Feminist analysis
• Ecological feminism
• Environmental sociology

Selected publications