M Moberg
Biographic Data
| ID | 3176 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M Moberg |
| GIVEN NAMES | M |
| FAMILY NAME | Moberg |
| SIGNATURE | MOBERG M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of South Alabama |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8142-892X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 68 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Governing Maya Communities and Lands in Belize: Indigenous Rights, Markets, and Sovereignties, by Laurie Kroshus Medina
Engaging Anthropological Theory: A Social and Political History
The contemporary anthropological moment
Global political-economic changes that gave rise to postmodernity in the late twentieth century have since accelerated, as have their cultural impact. This chapter considers how these trends have been reflected in contemporary anthropological theory. Historian Michel Foucault heavily influenced postmodern anthropology with his argument that power relations, exercised through knowledge and discourse, pervade all social institutions. In deconstruct…
Property and Territory: Origins of a Colonial Order in Belize in the 19th and 20th Centuries , by Odile Hoffmann
Roots of Resistance: A Story of Gender, Race, and Labor on the North Coast of Honduras
Throughout the mid-twentieth century, the overweening role of US banana companies in Central America provoked the region's major reformist and revolutionary currents. The United Fruit Company (UFCO) and its chief competitor, Standard Fruit, brazenly flaunted national sovereignty, monopolized land, and brutally repressed workers to achieve their ends. Over the companies' scandalous historical record, 1954 stands out as particularly significant: in…
Reading the present from the past in Hopkins, Belize: A memoir told in three ethnographies
The site of Douglas Taylor's landmark study of Garifuna language and culture, Hopkins, Belize, occupies a prominent place in the cultural anthropology of Central America. Over 70 years, this Afro-Caribbean community has been visited by a series of ethnographers whose synchronic "snapshots" have proved short-lived. In 1971 the first anthropologist to return described emerging livelihoods that defied Taylor's predictions. My late-1980s fieldwork re…
Militarism, Precarity, and Embeddedness
The contemporary anthropological moment
Engaging Anthropological Theory: A Social and Political History
This updated second edition of Mark Moberg's lively book offers a fresh look at the history of anthropological theory. Covering key concepts and theorists, Engaging Anthropological Theory examines the historical context of anthropological ideas and the contested nature of anthropology itself. Anthropological ideas regarding human diversity have always been rooted in the sociopolitical conditions in which they arose and exploring them in context h…
Banana: A global history
In the span of a few decades at the end of the 19th century, the banana moved from exotic obscurity throughout most of the Western world to become a mainstay of its daily diets. Admittedly, the oth
Market's end: Fair-trade social premiums as development in Dominica
On the island of Dominica, in the eastern Caribbean, the sale of fair-trade bananas generates "social premiums" to fund projects that the government can no longer afford because of structural adjustment. Promoted as a means of democratic decision-making, social premiums operate in an "awkward zone of engagement" between development policy and local practice. Their uses are constrained by fair-trade certification, as well as by the gender, class, …
Certification and Neoliberal Governance: Moral Economies of Fair Trade in the Eastern Caribbean
Many consumers and food-justice activists regard Fair Trade as a moral alternative to markets dominated by corporate agribusiness. Fair Trade frames producer-consumer relationships in the language of reciprocity and justice rather than the impersonal logic of the market. Despite its moral economy discourse, the movement embodies neoliberal assumptions that regulation and development should occur through the realm of consumer choice rather than st…
Engaging Anthropological Theory: A Social and Political History
This lively book offers a fresh look at the history of anthropological theory. Covering key concepts and theorists, Mark Moberg examines the historical context of anthropological ideas and the contested nature of anthropology itself. Anthropological ideas regarding human diversity have always been rooted in the socio-political conditions in which they arose and exploring them in context helps students understand how and why they evolved, and how …
Company Towns in the Americas: Landscape, Power, and Working-Class Communities
Company towns have been associated with the growth of industrial capitalism at least since the early nineteenth century. Their creation was usually attributable to the fact that production or resource extraction often occurred far from established population centers. The common view of such places is that employers achieved an unprecedented level of regimentation over their workers by controlling their access to housing, health care, and even pla…
Food for the Few: Neoliberal Globalism and Biotechnology in Latin America - edited by Otero, G
Determinism, Agency, and Justice
This article examines Richard Manning's book with critical attention to the role of agriculture, technology, and population as agents of cultural evolutionary change. It also attends to the critical role of agriculture and the food system in contemporary issues of sustainability and social justice
Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World
Book Review| July 01 2009 Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World. Dan Koeppel. Mark Moberg Mark Moberg Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Agricultural History (2009) 83 (3): 413–414. https://doi.org/10.1215/00021482-83.3.413 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Mark Moberg; Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the W…
The Banana: Empires, Trade Wars, and Globalization
Since the pioneering scholarship of Charles Kepner in the 1930s, a voluminous body of literature has examined how that most innocuous of tropical commodities, the banana, has become associated with flagrant violations of human rights and national sovereignty. Indeed, it was in the title of Kepner’s work (1935) that the words “banana” and “empire” were first paired. Subsequent scholars have examined permutations of this theme, focusing on the ways…
Banana Wars: Power, Production, and History in the Americas
Fair Trade and Eastern Caribbean Banana Farmers: Rhetoric and Reality in the Anti-Globalization Movement
With the impending removal of tariff quotas that formerly guaranteed access to the UK market, the Eastern Caribbean banana industry faces the prospect of direct price competition with cheaper Latin American bananas. Some farming communities in the region have embraced Fair Trade as an alternative marketing strategy. Certified Fair Trade farmers receive higher prices than do conventional growers, as well as a social premium for local development. …
Banana Wars: Power, Production, and History in the Americas
Erin Brockovich Doesn't Live Here: Environmental Politics and "Responsible Care" in Mobile County, Alabama
Since the 1950s, the small rural community of Axis, Alabama, has become one of the Southeast's largest sites of chemical production. Residents attribute numerous public health anomalies to emissions from its chemical plants. Cancer mortality rates in Axis are far greater than state averages, yet organized or individual opposition to the manufacturers has been nearly nonexistent. This paper examines the apparent acquiescence of community residents…
Co-Opting Justice: Transformation of a Multiracial Environmental Coalition in Southern Alabama
Between 1996 and 1998, plans to construct one of the nation's largest phenol plants near Mobile, Alabama, generated intense local opposition. Mobile Bay Watch, a movement originating among upper-middle-class whites, sought support from a nearby African American community to stop plant construction. In the process, it changed its focus from property values to the public health concerns of low-income residents. Yet, its strategies to encourage mino…
Myths of Ethnicity and Nation: Immigration, Work, and Identity in the Belize Banana Industry
The Garifuna Journey
The Garifuna Journey. 1998. 47 minutes, color. video by Andrea E. Leland and Kathy L. Berger. For more information contact Leland/Berger Productions, 1200 Judson, Evanston, IL 60202
Certification and Neoliberal Governance: Moral Economies of Fair Trade in the Eastern Caribbean
Many consumers and food-justice activists regard Fair Trade as a moral alternative to markets dominated by corporate agribusiness. Fair Trade frames producer-consumer relationships in the language of reciprocity and justice rather than the impersonal logic of the market. Despite its moral economy discourse, the movement embodies neoliberal assumptions that regulation and development should occur through the realm of consumer choice rather than st…
Crown Colony as Banana Republic: The United Fruit Company in British Honduras, 1900-1920
In much historiography of the colonial Caribbean, British administrators are portrayed as mediators between domestic elites, foreign capital, and the working class. Such scholarship converges with popular belief in Belize, whose institutions are seen as a legacy of 'impartial' British rule. This article examines the relationship between the United Fruit Company and the colonial government of British Honduras. Contrary to claims of administrative …
Citrus and the state: Factions and class formation in rural Belize
This article examines local-level politics and their effect on class formation in two neighboring Belizean villages. Charlestown and More Hope exhibit differing degrees of patronage-based factionalism, which is related to the state's differential involvement in local politics. This involvement is in turn governed by the perceived political value of individual rural constituencies. The effects of factionalism on class structure in Charlestown-a co…
Myths That Divide: Immigrant labor and class segmentation in the Belizean banana industry
Since 1980 thousands of immigrants have fled to Belize from political and economic crises elsewhere in Central America. The country has since witnessed growing confrontation between Afro-Belizeans and Hispanic immigrants. This article examines how national identity is reproduced by the recruitment of labor in the Belizean banana industry, where most Afro-Belizean workers have been replaced by immigrants. Myths of ethnicity rationalize the displac…
Continuity under Colonial Rule: The Alcalde System and the Garifuna in Belize, 1858-1969
British indirect rule in colonial Belize entailed the designation of alcaldes (headmen) in indigenous villages. Although the alcalde system was based on Spanish-Maya precedents, during the nineteenth century it was introduced to Gari- funa (Black Carib) communities as well. Ethnohistorical evidence indicates that Garifuna alcaldes became consensual leaders who attained considerable legitimacy and that the Garifuna modified the alcalde system to a…
Marketing Policy and the Loss of Food Self-Sufficiency in Rural Belize
Past observers attributed Belize's record of national deficits in staple crop production to the country's colonial legacy of suppressed agriculture and underdeveloped infrastructure. Yet following marketing policy revisions in the mid-1970s, Belizean agriculture was able to satisfy the country's requirements for basic staples, suggesting that cultural-historical factors need not preclude food self-sufficiency. Since 1983 food shortfalls and impor…
Class Segmentation and Divided Labor: Asian Workers in the Gulf of Mexico Seafood Industry
The growth of refugee and immigrant enclaves in the United States despite pressures for assimilation highlights the persistence of ethnic identity over other loyalties. Because ethnically distinct immigrants are often concentrated (whether by choice or discrimination) in particular labor markets, researchh among refugee populations provides an opportunity to evaluate theories of class and ethnicity in the work place. This article examines the cla…
Class Resistance and Class Hegemony: From Conflict to Co-optation in the Citrus Industry of Belize
Engaging Anthropological Theory: A Social and Political History
This lively book offers a fresh look at the history of anthropological theory. Covering key concepts and theorists, Mark Moberg examines the historical context of anthropological ideas and the contested nature of anthropology itself. Anthropological ideas regarding human diversity have always been rooted in the socio-political conditions in which they arose and exploring them in context helps students understand how and why they evolved, and how …
Conservation and Forced Innovation: Responses to Turtle Excluder Devices among Gulf of Mexico Shrimpers
By 1989, federal regulations required the use of Turtle Excluder Devices on offshore shrimp trawlers in the US waters. Fishermen in Bayou La Batre, Alabama initially responded to this forced innovation by experimenting with and modifying the device. Resistance followed when modifications were unable to reduce catch loss associated with their use. The unintended consequences of TEDs for fishermen's livelihoods and resource management are examined
From individuals to class: The dynamics of peasant cooperatives in revolutionary Nicaragua
Class Resistance and Class Hegemony: From Conflict to Co-optation in the Citrus Industry of Belize
Marketing Policy and the Loss of Food Self-Sufficiency in Rural Belize
Past observers attributed Belize's record of national deficits in staple crop production to the country's colonial legacy of suppressed agriculture and underdeveloped infrastructure. Yet following marketing policy revisions in the mid-1970s, Belizean agriculture was able to satisfy the country's requirements for basic staples, suggesting that cultural-historical factors need not preclude food self-sufficiency. Since 1983 food shortfalls and impor…
Citrus and the state: Factions and class formation in rural Belize
This article examines local-level politics and their effect on class formation in two neighboring Belizean villages. Charlestown and More Hope exhibit differing degrees of patronage-based factionalism, which is related to the state's differential involvement in local politics. This involvement is in turn governed by the perceived political value of individual rural constituencies. The effects of factionalism on class structure in Charlestown-a co…
Continuity under Colonial Rule: The Alcalde System and the Garifuna in Belize, 1858-1969
British indirect rule in colonial Belize entailed the designation of alcaldes (headmen) in indigenous villages. Although the alcalde system was based on Spanish-Maya precedents, during the nineteenth century it was introduced to Gari- funa (Black Carib) communities as well. Ethnohistorical evidence indicates that Garifuna alcaldes became consensual leaders who attained considerable legitimacy and that the Garifuna modified the alcalde system to a…
Citrus, Strategy, and Class: The Politics of Development in Southern Belize
Household Ecology: Economic Change and Domestic Life among the Kekchi Maya in Belize
Class Segmentation and Divided Labor: Asian Workers in the Gulf of Mexico Seafood Industry
The growth of refugee and immigrant enclaves in the United States despite pressures for assimilation highlights the persistence of ethnic identity over other loyalties. Because ethnically distinct immigrants are often concentrated (whether by choice or discrimination) in particular labor markets, researchh among refugee populations provides an opportunity to evaluate theories of class and ethnicity in the work place. This article examines the cla…
Conservation and Forced Innovation: Responses to Turtle Excluder Devices among Gulf of Mexico Shrimpers
By 1989, federal regulations required the use of Turtle Excluder Devices on offshore shrimp trawlers in the US waters. Fishermen in Bayou La Batre, Alabama initially responded to this forced innovation by experimenting with and modifying the device. Resistance followed when modifications were unable to reduce catch loss associated with their use. The unintended consequences of TEDs for fishermen's livelihoods and resource management are examined
The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. David Harvey
Citrus, Strategy, and Class: The Politics of Development in Northern Belize
Cultural Economies Past and Present. RHODA H. Halperin
Transnational Labor and Refugee Enclaves in a Central American Banana Industry
During the 1980s, more than three million immigrants fled to other countries from the political and economic crises affecting Central America. The influx of displaced Central Americans has had major demographic and cultural effects in Belize, the only officially anglophone country of the region. This article assesses the origins and migration plans of immigrant workers in the Belizean banana industry. Despite diminishing conflict in their homelan…
Crown Colony as Banana Republic: The United Fruit Company in British Honduras, 1900-1920
In much historiography of the colonial Caribbean, British administrators are portrayed as mediators between domestic elites, foreign capital, and the working class. Such scholarship converges with popular belief in Belize, whose institutions are seen as a legacy of 'impartial' British rule. This article examines the relationship between the United Fruit Company and the colonial government of British Honduras. Contrary to claims of administrative …
Myths That Divide: Immigrant labor and class segmentation in the Belizean banana industry
Since 1980 thousands of immigrants have fled to Belize from political and economic crises elsewhere in Central America. The country has since witnessed growing confrontation between Afro-Belizeans and Hispanic immigrants. This article examines how national identity is reproduced by the recruitment of labor in the Belizean banana industry, where most Afro-Belizean workers have been replaced by immigrants. Myths of ethnicity rationalize the displac…
Myths of Ethnicity and Nation: Immigration, Work, and Identity in the Belize Banana Industry
The Garifuna Journey
The Garifuna Journey. 1998. 47 minutes, color. video by Andrea E. Leland and Kathy L. Berger. For more information contact Leland/Berger Productions, 1200 Judson, Evanston, IL 60202
Culture and Resistance at Work
Producing Power: Ethnicity, Gender, and Class in. Caribbean Workplace. Kevin A. Yelvington. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995. 286 pp.The Terror of the Machine: Technology, Work, Gender, and Ecology on the U.S.-Mexico Border. Devon G. Pena. Austin: Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Texas, 1997.460 pp.Patriarchy on the Line: Labor, Gender, and Ideology in the Mexican Maquila Industry. Susan Tiano. Philadelphia: Temple Un…
Co-Opting Justice: Transformation of a Multiracial Environmental Coalition in Southern Alabama
Between 1996 and 1998, plans to construct one of the nation's largest phenol plants near Mobile, Alabama, generated intense local opposition. Mobile Bay Watch, a movement originating among upper-middle-class whites, sought support from a nearby African American community to stop plant construction. In the process, it changed its focus from property values to the public health concerns of low-income residents. Yet, its strategies to encourage mino…
Erin Brockovich Doesn't Live Here: Environmental Politics and "Responsible Care" in Mobile County, Alabama
Since the 1950s, the small rural community of Axis, Alabama, has become one of the Southeast's largest sites of chemical production. Residents attribute numerous public health anomalies to emissions from its chemical plants. Cancer mortality rates in Axis are far greater than state averages, yet organized or individual opposition to the manufacturers has been nearly nonexistent. This paper examines the apparent acquiescence of community residents…
Fair Trade and Eastern Caribbean Banana Farmers: Rhetoric and Reality in the Anti-Globalization Movement
With the impending removal of tariff quotas that formerly guaranteed access to the UK market, the Eastern Caribbean banana industry faces the prospect of direct price competition with cheaper Latin American bananas. Some farming communities in the region have embraced Fair Trade as an alternative marketing strategy. Certified Fair Trade farmers receive higher prices than do conventional growers, as well as a social premium for local development. …
Banana Wars: Power, Production, and History in the Americas
Banana Wars: Power, Production, and History in the Americas
Determinism, Agency, and Justice
This article examines Richard Manning's book with critical attention to the role of agriculture, technology, and population as agents of cultural evolutionary change. It also attends to the critical role of agriculture and the food system in contemporary issues of sustainability and social justice
Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World
Book Review| July 01 2009 Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World. Dan Koeppel. Mark Moberg Mark Moberg Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Agricultural History (2009) 83 (3): 413–414. https://doi.org/10.1215/00021482-83.3.413 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Mark Moberg; Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the W…
Political science (25 works) · Law (23 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Geography (17 works) · Economics (15 works) · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact (13 works) · Politics (11 works) · History (10 works) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (8 works) · Anthropology (8 works)