Melissa Johnson’s Research and Writing
Naturally
Creole: Nature, Community and Identity in an Ecotourist Paradise
Race
and Environment in the History of Belize
Social
and Environmental History of the San Gabriel River, Central Texas
Environmental
Justice in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
Naturally Creole: Nature, Community and Identity in an
Ecotourist Paradise
My main research, the focus of both my dissertation
research in the mid-1990s, and on-going field research through 2009 in Belize
and among Belizean migrants in the U.S., explores the meanings and practices of
nature and progress in which rural Creole Belizeans engage. The bulk of my research
centers on processes of wildlife conservation and rural development in the
Belizean Creole (Afro-Caribbean) communities of Crooked Tree and Lemonal in
Central Belize.
The newly independent 
Government of Belize
established the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary in 1984, at about the same that
a locally run ecotourism industry began to grow in the village. On the surface,
this situation seems to exemplify what current theorists and planners are
calling for: local-level involvement in and benefit from protected area
management. Yet all is far from perfect here. I argue that a central problem in
this is, as in many other situations in the global 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 Belize, Belizean NGOs, transnational
conservationists and other multi-and bi-lateral agencies. 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 marginalization of rural
Creole peoples, and sets into play 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 am currently completing a book-length manuscript for
publication that focuses on what nature is for rural Creole Belizans 
within this context,
and how ideas about what nature is are intertwined with conceptions of progress
and the visions rural Creoles have for their communities. I have three journal
manuscripts related to this project in various stages of the publication
process.
I am particularly interested in the
relationship between rural Belizeans and jaguars. A camp for trophy jaguar
hunting (of previously trapped and cages cats) run by a man from the U.S.
employed several Creole men in the 1960s; jaguars are listed as endangered
species day; jaguars threaten cattle herds and village dogs; and jaguars occupy
a big place in everyday discourse in rural Belize.
I have been thinking about the relationship between
migration to the U.S., senses of identity and hunting, fishing and game fish
and meat products.
I have written recently on ideas of dirt and matter out of
place in Belize, reflecting on how people think about nature, modernity, and
the material that 21st century consumption generates
Race in the Environmental History of Belize
Another major research
project concerns the mutual constitution of racialized identities and socially
constructed landscapes.
Belize is famous for
its racially and ethnically homogenous villages, and these groups in Belize are
patterned in particular ways in the natural environment. I explore how colonial discourses about
nature and race both created these kinds of patterns and how these particular
discourses in Belize were also shaped by the practices of different groups of
Belizeans, within the constraints of the colonial economic and political
apparatus. 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.
From Alligators and Indians to Cows and Anglos: Race and
Environment along the San Gabriel River in Central Texas
In the Summer of 2009, SU Environmental Studies major, and
Junior, Kimberly Griffin, and I began working on a social and environmental
history of a small section of the San Gabriel River that runs through
Georgetown. The river has been the 
central focus of human
activity in the area for thousands of years, and over time, and changes in
various peoples relationship to the river reveals shifts in the social make up
and the relationship between humans and nature in this part of the world. As
with my work in Belize, the tight entwining of ideas about race and nature
provide a fruitful analytical framework for our inquiry.
Environmental Justice in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
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. 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,
November 24, 2002 in New Orleans. Emily Niemeyer and I published an article, Ambivalent Landscapes: Environmental Justice in the U.S.-Mexico
Borderlands, in the journal Human
Ecology.
Last
Updated 8/09
Back
to Melissa A. Johnson's Homepage
Back
to the Sociology and Anthropology Department Homepage
Back to
Southwestern University's Homepage