Research
Interests
Economic geography, environment and planning, sustainable economies, agriculture,
food, wine, and complexity.
I am interested in the problem of sustainability from a regional, industry and community
perspective. On one level, I research how industries are structured. For example,
my wine research explores the extent to which we can talk of a cohesive industrial
region when we talk about the wine industry in Napa and Sonoma counties, while my
dairy research has looked into how the preservation of industry through environmental
intiatives has generated innovations in products and farming practices.
On a second level, my research looks at how learning and skill development occur within
regions. I ask questions like what kind of learning processes enable vineyard managers
and winemakers to become and remain innovative and successful in their chosen fields
and how might the place-based practices or conventions of industry shape the types
of learning that are possible? My article about agro-industrial conventions in the Geographical
Journal touches on this theme.
On a third level, my work looks at community engagement specifically around environmental issues.
Here I am interested in how entrepreneurs, industries, companies, and communities
respond to and engage with environmental goals and values. How do community concerns,
ideals and activism become incorporated into planning and industry practices? Is
the region part of this process? If so, how might community engagement figure into
innovation and regional learning within industries? And how might multiple stakeholders
engage in a process of increasing sustainable development within specific places.
Topical interests within the three above areas include the wine, dairy, poultry and
the broader food industries, particularly those actors interested in local and other
forms of alternative food production.
For the past several years, I have been working on
a community garden on the CSUSM campus -- dubbed "The Food Project". The purpose of the Sustainable Food Project is to experiment with experiential learning
on a largely commuter campus and to see if a combination of students, community partners
and faculty can sustain production of food in ways similar to ongoing projects on
more residential campuses. The project relates directly to my work on alternative
food economies and on integrating organizations and place where we are working through
the complexities of connecting stakeholders to the local ecology in support of sustainability.
And, I continue work comparing sustainability in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand and the Northern
Califorina wine industry.
Publications
Greig Tor Guthey, 2017. Review of Inequality and the 1%, AAG Review of Books 5(1) 2017: 20-22.
Greig Guthey. 2015. Review of The Atlas of California: Mapping the Challenges of a New Era by Richard Walker and Suresh Lodha. Berkeley: UC Press. Journal of San Diego History.
Greig Tor Guthey, Gail Whiteman, and Michael Elmes, 2014. Place and Sense of Place:
Implications for Organizational Studies of Sustainability. Journal of Management Inquiry.
Greig Tor Guthey, 2013. Review of Robin Grossinger, Napa Valley Historical Ecology
Atlas:Exploring a Hidden Landscape of Transformation and Resilience in Agricultural History.
Sally Fairfax, Louise Dyble, Greig Tor Guthey, Lauren Gwin, Monica Moore and Jen Sokolove,
2012. California Cuisine and Just Food. The MIT Press.
Greig Tor Guthey, 2012. "Northern California Wine through an Economic Geographer's
Lens," in Percy Dougherty (ed) The Geography of Wine: Regions, Terroir and Techniques. London: Springer.
Greig Tor Guthey and Gail Whiteman, 2009. Social and Ecological Transitions: Winemaking
in Northern California. Emergence: Complexity and Organizations.
Greig Tor Guthey, 2008. Agro-industrial Conventions: Some Evidence from Northern California's
Wine Industry. The Geographical Journal 174 (2): 138-148.
Adina Merenlender, Lynn Huntsinger, Greig Guthey, and Sally Fairfax, 2004. Land Trusts
and Conservation Easements: Who is Conserving What for Whom? Conservation Biology 18 (1): 65-76.
Greig Tor Guthey, Lauren Gwin, and Sally Fairfax. 2003. Creative Preservation in California's
Dairy Industry. The Geographical Review 93 (2): 171¿192.
Greig Guthey, 2001. Mexican Places in Southern Spaces. In Arthur Murphy et al. 2001. Latino Workers in the Contemporary South. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
