Current Research Projects
1. The Dynamics of Small Farming in Jamaica
This multi-year collaborative project (with Scott Curtis and Doug Gamble) has utilized a mixed-methods approach to document the vulnerability of Jamaican small farmers in the face of climate change and volatile market dynamics. Our empirical findings suggest that the ability of farmers to store and deploy water is becoming a key factor in farmer success, but that access to irrigation technology is uneven. Climate change may therefore exacerbate rural inequalities unless the networked socionatural assemblages that help to manage farm life are re-envisioned as sites of climate justice.
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Funding: National Science Foundation
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Related Publications:
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Moulton, A., Popke, J., Curtis, S., Gamble, D., & Poore, S. (in press, 2016). Water Management Strategies and Climate Adaptation: Lessons from the 2014 Drought in Jamaica. Caribbean Geography.
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Gamble, D.W., D. Campbell, T. Allen, D. Barker, S. Curtis, D. McGregor, and J. Popke. 2010. Climate Change, Drought, and Jamaican Agriculture: Local Knowledge and the Climate Record. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100(4): 880-893.
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2. Energy Transitions in the Caribbean
Amid global concerns about climate change and a desire to promote energy security and independence, the Caribbean region has become a laboratory for efforts by international actors to promote a renewable energy transition. The emerging contours of this transition include new energy landscapes and socio-technical systems built upon forms of indigenous geo-material agency (geothermal, wind, solar, hydro), as well as the promotion of distributed energy production and new models of energy consumption. The goal of this collaborative project (with Conor Harrison) is to examine what is at stake in this shift, as new technologies, infrastructures and circuits of finance and expertise are mobilized to effect a fundamental change in Caribbean energy landscapes and citizenship.
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Related Publications:
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Other Research
• Geographic Thought and Theories of Ethics
My empirical investigations are informed by a keen interest in contemporary intellectual debates within geography and social theory. I believe that philosophical discussion is crucial to the vitality of the discipline, and I have tried to contribute to academic discussions in much of my work. I have often been drawn to theories of ethics, as a way to think through our relations with, and responsibilities toward, the human and non-human others with whom we must assemble and share a common world.
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Related Publications:
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Popke, J. 2010. Ethical The Spaces of Being In-common. In The Handbook of Social Geography, S. Smith, R. Pain, S. Marston and J. P. Jones III (eds). London: Sage, pp. 435-454
Popke, J. 2009. Geography and Ethics: Nonrepresentational Encounters, Collective Responsibility and Economic Difference. Progress in Human Geography 33(1): 81-90.
Popke, J. 2007. Geography and Ethics: Spaces of Cosmopolitan Responsibility. Progress in Human Geography 31(4): 509-518.
Popke, J. 2006. Geography and Ethics: Everyday Mediations through Care and Consumption. Progress in Human Geography, 30(4): 504-512.
Popke, E. J. 2004. The Face of the Other: Zapatismo, Responsibility and the Ethics of Deconstruction. Social and Cultural Geography, 5(2): 301-317.
Popke, E. J. 2003. Poststructuralist Ethics: Subjectivity, Responsibility and the Space of Community. Progress in Human Geography, 27(3): 298-316.
• Latino Migration to the US South
Beginning in the late 1990s, Eastern North Carolina became one of the ‘new destinations’ for Latino migration and settlement in the US. Working with Rebecca Torres, I explored some of the contours and implications of a phenomenon that was attracting a good deal of public and media attention. We carried out two field-based research projects in Mexican sending regions, one in Michoacán and the other in Veracruz. In all, we carried out some 70 interviews with migrant families, migrants, community leaders, farmers and government officials. Our most basic finding was that new streams of transnational migration were deeply intertwined with the neoliberalization of both the US South and the Mexican countryside.
Related Publications:
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Torres, R., Popke, E. J. and Hapke, H. 2006. The South’s Silent Bargain: Rural Restructuring, Latino Labor and the Ambiguities of Migrant Experience. In H. Smith and O. Furuseth (eds), The New South: Latinos and the Transformation of Place. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, pp. 37-67.
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Popke, J. 2011. Latino Migration and Neoliberalism in the Rural South: Notes Toward a Rural Cosmopolitanism. Southeastern Geographer 51(2): 242-259.