Polly Lauer - K. Sivaramakrishnan Reflection

Polly Lauer
Cornell University 

Many thanks to the organizers. In proud Agrarian Studies tradition, lunch will be served right after this, so I will keep it brief.

I specifically will speak to Shivi’s leadership of Agrarian Studies during and around the pandemic, and what that showed about him as scholar, mentor, thinker not just in that prolonged moment of crisis, but always over time.  

Somehow it was already six years ago that we retreated indoors, locked ourselves down and locked ourselves in. We feared everyone and everything around us—remember how many people poured Clorox over their fresh vegetables and fruits? That was not the best agricultural practice. Agrarian Studies, under Shivi and Libby’s direction, did in that moment what this field is wont to do: the program flipped the script. As the world felt closed, the program somehow became more open than ever. From our tiny Zoom screens, we came together from home, or a certain Jim Scott from his barn, from the reaches of the west coast to Europe to South Asia. A sign that the agrarian question is a global one that begins with the local, at home. As everything felt deeply uncertain, Agrarian Studies presented a pillar of stability where rigorous conversations about that strange present could be mediated, remedied even, by reminders of struggles past and dreams of futures possible.

To me, this openness, however, is not singular to the pandemic. It reflects how Shivi enacts the ethos of Agrarian Studies in all things. When I became the graduate coordinator, Shivi shared that he himself had been the program’s very first coordinator some three decades before. Talk about deep roots! Shivi’s is a career of grounded commitment, one where those deep roots have allowed for the flourishing of an entire field. And this field is no monocrop, but a rich polyculture of interdisciplinarity. Shivi shows us that history, anthropology, political science, environmental studies, economics, forestry, sociology, law, biology, statistics, area studies, and more should never be tended alone. Shivi’s cultivation of interdisciplinarity informs not only his intellectual feats, but also a generous curiosity. Workshopping quickly became my favorite form of academic activity, because of Shivi’s model of close engagement and enthusiasm about projects from literally all over the map. This is an approach that takes early graduate students’ work and comments just as seriously as the most respected names in the academy. As he once told me in a moment of anxiety over sharing work: the more polished something is, the less useful the conversation and feedback are. An important lesson that this career is iterative and that everyone benefits from vulnerability. That is the spirit of Shivi, someone who nurtures budding ideas and feeds them with a prolific knowledge learned from years of asking the right questions.  

I’ll conclude now with a final note that those right questions don’t just stop in workshops; they also extend to his role as an advocate. Shivi as an administrator carries forward the convictions of just and equitable distribution, asking of this institution to advance opportunities, resources, and time to scholars of all levels, most especially to junior scholars and grad students and even those outside academia. Along with Libby and Jim, Shivi shows us that Agrarian Studies is not just a place to talk the talk—it’s a place to walk the walk.  

So, let us all celebrate how deep roots are connections that prevent erosion and yield the most beautiful fruits. Many cheers to you, Shivi!