Brent Mccusker
Biographic Data
| ID | 219175 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brent Mccusker |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brent |
| FAMILY NAME | Mccusker |
| SIGNATURE | MCCUSKER B |
| AFFILIATIONS | West Virginia University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6299-7163 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 115 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Remembering Phil O’Keefe
In this brief note, I summarize some of Phil O’Keefe's contributions to the discipline of geography. I focus on there specific interventions and show his lasting impact
The Routledge Handbook of Development and Environment
States of Disease
Climate vulnerability mapping
Maps synthesizing climate, biophysical and socioeconomic data have become part of the standard tool‐kit for communicating the risks of climate change to society. Vulnerability maps are used to direct attention to geographic areas where impacts on society are expected to be greatest and that may therefore require adaptation interventions. Under the Green Climate Fund and other bilateral climate adaptation funding mechanisms, donors are investing b…
Groundswell
This report, which focuses on three regions—Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America that together represent 55 percent of the developing world’s population—finds that climate change will push tens of millions of people to migrate within their countries by 2050. It projects that without concrete climate and development action, just over 143 million people—or around 2.8 percent of the population of these three regions—could be forced to m…
Livelihoods and Land Uses Produced Together
Land use and livelihood studies rarely engage dialectical thinking to explain how change occurs in rural, peasant economies. In this paper, I employ the dialectical concepts of contradiction and sublation to investigate the ways in which livelihoods and land uses are produced together at the household scale. Using quantitative and qualitative surveys, I demonstrate the degree to which land use and livelihoods are internally related and produced t…
Practical, critical and constructive engagement
Chronic Food Insecurity in Kenya's Asal Areas
Food security and insecurity is often conceptualized in narrow, economistic or technicist terms that simply postulate an inefficiency in production or exchange as the root cause of food security. More elaborate notions put issues such as “access” at the center of their theoretical frameworks. In this paper, we examine food insecurity as a state of being that exists when various modes of production disarticulate. This disarticulation is examined w…
Introduction
Recent changes in the agrarian studies and geography literatures present differing views on the pace and trajectory of change in rural developing areas. In this special section of Human Geography, we contrast the theoretical and practice implications of these differing approaches, namely depeasantization, accumulation by dispossession and deproletarianization. Depeasantization refers to change in livelihood activities out of agriculture, long the…
The Political Economy of Nature
This article explores the dialectics of land use and livelihoods to formulate a political economy of nature approach to studying the production of nature. Rather than solely postulate “drivers” and “feedbacks” between changes in land use and livelihoods as change=population+affluence+technology (or some closely related variant) as is so often done in the mainstream land use literature, it is argued here that change is co-produced as households/ag…
Do Forests Help Rural Households Adapt to Climate Variability? Evidence from Southern Malawi
Beyond Developmentality
The co-production of land use and livelihoods change
Fighting Fire With a Broken Teacup
Since the rise of its first democratically elected government in 1994, South Africa has sought to redress its highly inequitable land distribution through a series of land‐reform programs. In this study we examine land‐redistribution efforts in two of South Africa's provinces, the Western Cape and Limpopo. By analyzing a cross‐section of projects in these two locales we develop a political ecology of stymied land‐reform possibilities to explain t…
Land Reform in the Era of Neoliberalism
This is a propitious moment in which to research and write about land reform. For example, and as Zimbabwe's fast-track program exemplifies, land-reform efforts aiming to address the unequal distribution of land in specific national contexts can have broad impacts and grab headlines worldwide. And in other places, such as South Africa, Brazil, Venezuela, and the Philippines, land-reform efforts are creating tensions over the unequal distribution …
Apartheid spatial engineering and land use change in Mankweng, South Africa
Land use change studies permeate the geographic literature. While these studies have helped researchers understand the dynamics and importance of such changes, they have less often taken a deeper historical approach in combination with their traditional strengths of geographic information analysis. In this study, we explore historical land use changes in one of South Africa's former bantustans, Lebowa, from 1963 to 2001. We argue that changes in …
Environment and development in the former South African bantustans
An assessment of women’s access to natural resources through communal projects in South Africa
The co-production of livelihoods and land use change
Land Use and Cover Change as an Indicator of Transformation on Recently Redistributed Farms in Limpopo Province, South Africa
The impact of membership in communal property associations on livelihoods in the Northern Province, South Africa
The co-production of livelihoods and land use change
Do Forests Help Rural Households Adapt to Climate Variability? Evidence from Southern Malawi
The co-production of land use and livelihoods change
Land Use and Cover Change as an Indicator of Transformation on Recently Redistributed Farms in Limpopo Province, South Africa
Environment and development in the former South African bantustans
The impact of membership in communal property associations on livelihoods in the Northern Province, South Africa
Apartheid spatial engineering and land use change in Mankweng, South Africa
Land use change studies permeate the geographic literature. While these studies have helped researchers understand the dynamics and importance of such changes, they have less often taken a deeper historical approach in combination with their traditional strengths of geographic information analysis. In this study, we explore historical land use changes in one of South Africa's former bantustans, Lebowa, from 1963 to 2001. We argue that changes in …
Fighting Fire With a Broken Teacup
Since the rise of its first democratically elected government in 1994, South Africa has sought to redress its highly inequitable land distribution through a series of land‐reform programs. In this study we examine land‐redistribution efforts in two of South Africa's provinces, the Western Cape and Limpopo. By analyzing a cross‐section of projects in these two locales we develop a political ecology of stymied land‐reform possibilities to explain t…
Introduction
Recent changes in the agrarian studies and geography literatures present differing views on the pace and trajectory of change in rural developing areas. In this special section of Human Geography, we contrast the theoretical and practice implications of these differing approaches, namely depeasantization, accumulation by dispossession and deproletarianization. Depeasantization refers to change in livelihood activities out of agriculture, long the…
The Political Economy of Nature
This article explores the dialectics of land use and livelihoods to formulate a political economy of nature approach to studying the production of nature. Rather than solely postulate “drivers” and “feedbacks” between changes in land use and livelihoods as change=population+affluence+technology (or some closely related variant) as is so often done in the mainstream land use literature, it is argued here that change is co-produced as households/ag…
Land Reform in the Era of Neoliberalism
This is a propitious moment in which to research and write about land reform. For example, and as Zimbabwe's fast-track program exemplifies, land-reform efforts aiming to address the unequal distribution of land in specific national contexts can have broad impacts and grab headlines worldwide. And in other places, such as South Africa, Brazil, Venezuela, and the Philippines, land-reform efforts are creating tensions over the unequal distribution …
An assessment of women’s access to natural resources through communal projects in South Africa
The impact of membership in communal property associations on livelihoods in the Northern Province, South Africa
Land Use and Cover Change as an Indicator of Transformation on Recently Redistributed Farms in Limpopo Province, South Africa
The co-production of livelihoods and land use change
An assessment of women’s access to natural resources through communal projects in South Africa
Apartheid spatial engineering and land use change in Mankweng, South Africa
Land use change studies permeate the geographic literature. While these studies have helped researchers understand the dynamics and importance of such changes, they have less often taken a deeper historical approach in combination with their traditional strengths of geographic information analysis. In this study, we explore historical land use changes in one of South Africa's former bantustans, Lebowa, from 1963 to 2001. We argue that changes in …
Environment and development in the former South African bantustans
Fighting Fire With a Broken Teacup
Since the rise of its first democratically elected government in 1994, South Africa has sought to redress its highly inequitable land distribution through a series of land‐reform programs. In this study we examine land‐redistribution efforts in two of South Africa's provinces, the Western Cape and Limpopo. By analyzing a cross‐section of projects in these two locales we develop a political ecology of stymied land‐reform possibilities to explain t…
Land Reform in the Era of Neoliberalism
This is a propitious moment in which to research and write about land reform. For example, and as Zimbabwe's fast-track program exemplifies, land-reform efforts aiming to address the unequal distribution of land in specific national contexts can have broad impacts and grab headlines worldwide. And in other places, such as South Africa, Brazil, Venezuela, and the Philippines, land-reform efforts are creating tensions over the unequal distribution …
The co-production of land use and livelihoods change
Do Forests Help Rural Households Adapt to Climate Variability? Evidence from Southern Malawi
Beyond Developmentality
Chronic Food Insecurity in Kenya's Asal Areas
Food security and insecurity is often conceptualized in narrow, economistic or technicist terms that simply postulate an inefficiency in production or exchange as the root cause of food security. More elaborate notions put issues such as “access” at the center of their theoretical frameworks. In this paper, we examine food insecurity as a state of being that exists when various modes of production disarticulate. This disarticulation is examined w…
Introduction
Recent changes in the agrarian studies and geography literatures present differing views on the pace and trajectory of change in rural developing areas. In this special section of Human Geography, we contrast the theoretical and practice implications of these differing approaches, namely depeasantization, accumulation by dispossession and deproletarianization. Depeasantization refers to change in livelihood activities out of agriculture, long the…
The Political Economy of Nature
This article explores the dialectics of land use and livelihoods to formulate a political economy of nature approach to studying the production of nature. Rather than solely postulate “drivers” and “feedbacks” between changes in land use and livelihoods as change=population+affluence+technology (or some closely related variant) as is so often done in the mainstream land use literature, it is argued here that change is co-produced as households/ag…
Practical, critical and constructive engagement
Livelihoods and Land Uses Produced Together
Land use and livelihood studies rarely engage dialectical thinking to explain how change occurs in rural, peasant economies. In this paper, I employ the dialectical concepts of contradiction and sublation to investigate the ways in which livelihoods and land uses are produced together at the household scale. Using quantitative and qualitative surveys, I demonstrate the degree to which land use and livelihoods are internally related and produced t…
Groundswell
This report, which focuses on three regions—Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America that together represent 55 percent of the developing world’s population—finds that climate change will push tens of millions of people to migrate within their countries by 2050. It projects that without concrete climate and development action, just over 143 million people—or around 2.8 percent of the population of these three regions—could be forced to m…
States of Disease
Climate vulnerability mapping
Maps synthesizing climate, biophysical and socioeconomic data have become part of the standard tool‐kit for communicating the risks of climate change to society. Vulnerability maps are used to direct attention to geographic areas where impacts on society are expected to be greatest and that may therefore require adaptation interventions. Under the Green Climate Fund and other bilateral climate adaptation funding mechanisms, donors are investing b…
The Routledge Handbook of Development and Environment
Remembering Phil O’Keefe
In this brief note, I summarize some of Phil O’Keefe's contributions to the discipline of geography. I focus on there specific interventions and show his lasting impact
Geography (13 works) · Political science (13 works) · Economics (12 works) · Agriculture (11 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management (8 works) · Economic growth (8 works) · Land Rights and Reforms (8 works) · Ecology (7 works) · Livelihood (7 works)