Food and Agriculture
The industrialization of agriculture within the US has led to increased rural poverty, environmental pollution, and unhealthy food. And this system is being exported around the world, developing a form of global agriculture that will ultimately lead to environmental and social degradation. My research explores how farmers and rural populations can confront and change the impact of an industrialized and often unjust agricultural system. Within my dissertation, Visualizing Possibilities, I focus on rural African American cooperatives and farmers in the southern US. The historical oppression these communities have faced has been well documented, leading to the formation of a deficit model of the rural South. Yet, rural African American communities have a history of resistance and organizing that have contributed to an alternative social landscape. My research focuses on the forms of resistance, mobilizing efforts, and cultural practices used by African American farmers to transform farming from an oppressive to an emancipatory system. These themes are also addressed in my courses on Food Sovereignty, Food Systems and Sustainable Development, From King Cotton to Queen Sugar, and Development and Underdevelopment in the US South.
Visual and Digital Methods
A key methodology in my research is the production of community-based ethnographic films. Drawing on a framework of reflexive science, I approach filmmaking as a collaborative and intersubjective process of shared time and space through which individuals and groups can directly express cultural and subjective identities and then collaboratively discuss and interpret the material that was filmed. The ethnographic value derived from this method resides not simply in the films but in the process and social interactions surrounding their production and viewing. This process is a repetitive practice in what I term adaptive co-production. In my dissertation, I apply this methodology to questions in development studies, using an ethnographic lens to understand how everyday practices and relationships can be mobilized to manifest social, political, and economic development. My current project, Claiming Place, combines ethnographic filmmaking with data visualization techniques in order to explore the role of space and place in the construction of land rights among African American farmers in the Southern US. This project integrates geographical, statistical, and ethnographic materials into an interactive website. These themes are also addressed in my courses on Visual Culture, Visual Research Methods, and Between Art and Research.
Place and Land Rights
In 1973, Robert Browne wrote “Only Six Million Acres”, a seminal report on the rapid land dispossession among African American farmers, mostly in the rural south. Today, African American farmers own an estimated 3.6 million acres (NASS, 2012). This rapid decline has not only stripped African American communities of a primary wealth asset, it has affected the place-making strategies of those that live on and near these landholdings. My current project, Claiming Place, departs from simply viewing land as an asset in order to explore how African American farmers make places, in spite of or in addition to land ownership. This project details current strategies, by organizations and farm cooperatives, to stem this rapid dispossession and maintain Black land ownership. Alongside an analysis of land as an asset, this project highlights the many ways in which struggles over land include negotiations over place and space. Within a multimedia platform, this project highlights how spatial constructions involve political contestations over rights of residency and occupancy, rights to name and have history in places, and the rights to make spaces productive. While focusing on rural case studies, this project resonates with current contestations over the spatial manifestation of physical and symbolic violence affecting African Americans today. These themes are also addressed in my courses on Food Sovereignty, Land Labor and Race, and Environmental Justice.
Environmental Relations
My research is motivated by a broader goal to understand how sustainable agriculture is generated and supported institutionally and individually. At an institutional level, I use assemblage theory to unravel the political and economic pressures that effect production choices and how farmers mitigate these pressures, especially through establishing independent institutions. At an individual level, I examine the relationship between farmers and their environments specifically looking at the lived, embodied, and tacit manifestations of environmental perceptions and knowledge. As I argue in my forthcoming article, Framing Nature, filmmaking provides a unique method for engaging and understanding embodied and tacit relationships to the environment, and negotiations between diverse forms of knowledge that affect farmers’ agricultural practices. These themes are also addressed in my courses on Sustainable Development, Environmental Justice, and The Politics of Food Production.
Critical studies of Race and Culture
With growing resistance to identity politics, my research seeks to understand the relationship between identity formation and political action and how identity politics serve a purpose for marginalized groups. In my dissertation, I explore how race plays a role in the strategies of a community-based rural development organization helping African American farmers in the US South. Within this network of Black farmers, race becomes operationalized along three fault lines: as a means to identify and address past and ongoing discrimination; to organize collectively around shared political goals; and to affirm and uphold common cultural heritages, subject positions, and communal relations. I continue to address identity formation (both internally and externally imposed) within my next research project, Black Cowboys. In this research I am examining how constructs of race and gender are performed, evoked, or transgressed through the practice of cattle roping as an occupation, a social activity, and as part of rodeo competitions. These themes are also addressed in my courses on Environmental Justice, Land Labor and Race, and Visual Representations.
Participatory Research
My research addresses participation in three ways. First, I study what participation means both in the world of research and the world of development. Following the use and implementation of a broad range of terms, such as participatory, community-based, collaborative, I investigate the ways researchers and practitioners have implemented such approaches, ways in which these approaches have been successful, and when they have failed or resulted in dominating or hegemonic outcomes. Second, I use participatory approaches within my research. Through building on the ideas of reflexive science, I see people’s own involvement and purposeful engagement with research as both an ethical and epistemologically robust method to develop intersubjective knowledge. I solicit the input and engagement from people involved in both my written and filmic research and actively distribute my materials to those who have participated. And third, I seek to create research that is participates with diverse audiences. This is sometimes referred to public research. I work with local organizations to find ways to both design useful research, and to disseminate findings in ways that are relevant to people working on the topics under examination. I write and publish for journals that cross disciplinary boundaries and engage both scholars and practitioners. I also use my films to contribute to discussions and presentations at local gatherings, meetings, and conferences.