Welcome to season two of Deadly Industry: Challenging Big Tobacco, the podcast where we explore the tactics used by the tobacco industry as it pursues profit over health.

In this first episode of the new season, Louis speaks with Professor Roy Maconachie and Dr. Pankhuri Agarwal about the experiences of farmers who produce tobacco leaf, in often exploitative conditions. In this wide-ranging discussion they consider how useful the concept of modern slavery is, how tobacco farmers can become trapped in cycles of debt and why child labour is still a part of the tobacco industry. They also explore the use of filmmaking as a tool for decolonising knowledge.

Dr Pankhuri Agarwal is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of Bath. Her forthcoming book, Fictions of Freedom: Migration, Modern Slavery and Bureaucracy in India (Cambridge University Press), explores how anti-trafficking interventions such as rescue shape workers’ lives and their encounters with state bureaucracy and law. More information is available on her website.

Professor Roy Maconachie is Professor of Natural Resources and Development in the University of Bath’s Department of Social & Policy Sciences. Roy’s research in Sub-Saharan Africa explores the social, political and economic aspects of food production and natural resource management, and their relationships to wider societal change. 

Sources used in this episode include:

• Tobacco Slave Film
• https://doi.org/10.1177/00380261241274886
• Cobalt Rush on Vimeo
• What happened after the Boohoo scandal?
• How Farmers Grow Debt While Tobacco Companies Grow Profit - STOP

Deadly Industry: Challenging Big Tobacco is a weekly podcast from the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath. It is hosted by Louis Laurence, produced by Kate White and edited by Sacha Goodwin. The production manager is Jacqueline Oliver.

To get in touch, e-mail us at tobacco-admin@bath.ac.uk or find us on LinkedIn, Bluesky and X. Find more episodes here: https://shows.acast.com/deadly-industry-challenging-big-tobacco

The views expressed in this episode by the podcast participants (host and guests) are their own and do not reflect the views of the University of Bath or any other affiliate groups.

For information on the Tobacco Control Research Group's funding sources please read the following statement: https://www.bath.ac.uk/corporate-information/tobacco-control-research-group-statement-on-funding-sources/

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