Melissa Johnson’s Research and Writing
Ethno-Environmental History of Belize
Environmental Justice in the Borderlands
Naturally Creole:
Conservation, Development and Community in Rural
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My main research, the focus of both my dissertation
research in the mid-1990s, and on-going field research through 2008, in . |
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Yet, all is far from perfect here. I argue that a central problem in this, as
in many other situations in the “South,” is a fundamental conflict in the
ideas of nature and progress held by the various groups of people involved in
Crooked Tree. These include various
constituencies within the village, the government of |
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Recently, I have been thinking about the relationship
between migration to the |
Along with conflicting sets of ideas (and the practices
they inform), a major issue is the uneven distribution of power, both in
terms of decision-making and the resources (economic, cultural and political)
that go along with this. This uneven
distribution repeats historical patterns of the marginalization of rural
Creole peoples, and sets into play predictable dynamics of hegemony and
resistance. Thus, both ways of thinking and patterns of practice
generate difficult circumstances for implementing ‘sustainable
development’---or simultaneously conserving biodiversity and nurturing a
local socio-economic system.
I have also written recently
on ideas of “dirt” and matter out of place in |
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Theory
in Anthropology
My main scholarly energy in 2008 is focused on writing a
manuscript, Theory in Anthropology,
for Berg Publishers. This will be an
introductory text on theory in Anthropology targeted to advanced
undergraduate students and beginning graduate students. The text focuses equally on the historical
development of theory in the discipline as well as on contemporary theory used
by anthropologists today. It also aims
to challenge the conventional canonization of anthropological literature, and
to bring in theorists from the margins.
Race
in the Environmental History of Belize
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Creole fisherman about to set
off fishing in Crooked Tree Lagoon, circa 1992. |
Another major research project concerns the mutual
constitution of racialized identities and socially constructed
landscapes. |
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In this project I focus primarily on the emergence of
the Belizean Creole identity, and the construction of the Garifuna (formerly
known as “Black Caribs”). I have two articles published on this project, on in Environmental History, and one in Belizean Studies. |
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Environmental Justice in the Borderlands: The Ambivalent
Landscape of Derechos Humanos,
a colonia popular in Matamoros,
Mexico
This was an inter-disciplinary
student-oriented project conducted with Drs. Laura Hobgood-Oster in Religion
and Emily Niemeyer in Chemistry. Along
with students (7 in the summer of 2002, of which 5 are pictured below: Santiago
Guerra, Angela Townley, Ben Thompson, Kelly Sharp,
and at the front, Claire Campbell) Laura, Emily and I aimed to better
understand how people cope with living in heavily degraded landscapes along the
border, the nature of that degradation, and the attempts made by both community
members and outside groups (especially church-related “service” efforts) to
improve these conditions. My capacity in
this project was supervisory, with most of the ethnographic research conducted
by students.
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Our project was the subject of
the lead article in the Southwestern alumni magazine. Claire Campbell, Santiago Guerra and Emily
Williams also joined me in a panel entitled “Environmental Justice: At Home and
Abroad” at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association,
Emily Niemeyer and I have just had a journal
article, Ambivalent Landscapes: Environmental Justice in the U.S.-Mexico
Borderlands, accepted for publication in the journal Human Ecology.
Last Revised 3/2008
Southwestern
University Department of Sociology and Anthropology