Conversando con Eduardo Sevilla Guzmán. De la Sociología Rural a la Agroecología: la revalorización del conocimiento local como constante

Abstract

Drawing on his own experience, Eduardo Sevilla Guzmán talks about the specificity of disciplines dealing with rural environments. As he explains in this interview, his turn to the social sciences was due to the need to elude the control exerted on his research by landholders and companies as he was working at an engineering college. Then, as he searched for an alternative to what is known as “conventional” agriculture, his attention turned to the study of other historical and contemporary ways of managing natural resources. This is how his career ended up in Agroecology, understood as a mix of local knowledge and the natural sciences. All along his career he has advised and collaborated with the SOC (Sindicato de Obreros del Campo), a historical Andalusian association of peasant workers, and he has established both academic and activist alliances in the international field of peasant struggles and studies. As it becomes apparent in this interview, his commitment involves a militant and multi-epistemological approach to research.