I am currently interested in understanding how how the livelihoods of farmers and rural communities on both sides of the Irish border have been transformed by the redesigned agricultural policy after Brexit. I am also working on two additional projects in Puerto Rico. My past research projects focused on two different strands: 1) The first one tries to look at how communities in Puerto Rico are relying on energy transformations to imagine and build political projects. 2) My secondary research strand on Puerto Rico, looks at how the Puerto Rico New Song Movement (PRNSM) documents and participates of Puerto Rico’s environmental movement since the 1960s.

In the past a research assistant to Dr. Manuel Valdés Pizzini, a cultural anthropologist affiliated with the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of the Coast (CIEL) at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez. Initially, my work here was to document and understand the historical changes the Puerto Rican coast had undergone since the nineteenth century. However, in 2017, two months after beginning to work with Valdés Pizzini, Hurricane María devastated Puerto Rico. After the storm, my work transformed into a systematic understanding of how communities survive under dire conditions. I had the opportunity to visit  and collaborate with different communities and documented how they survived the complex and challenging reconstruction processes. I prepared and distributed educational material for coastal communities and fishers. The idea was not to tell them how to organize, but to be a facilitator and help them feel empowered through communication, information, and support.  

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Critical Agrarian Studies | Critical Border Studies | Economic Anthropology | Nationalism | Political Anthropology | Political Economy | Rural Development
Regional Focus: Europe, the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Puerto Rico

RESEARCH PROJECTS

1. Agricultural Subsidies and Everyday Cross-Border Regionalism in Northern Ireland’s Borders.

This ethnographic and archival research project will examine the impact of the transformation of agricultural subsidies after Brexit, on the everyday lives of farmers located in the borderlands of County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, and County Monaghan, Republic of Ireland. To understand the everyday life of farmers it will analyze the impact of these transformation to the “everyday cross-border regionalism” — the everyday lives and practices of navigating between two states daily (Wilson 2024; Helleiner 2016; Strüver 2005). The main research questions that guide this work are: How are agricultural policy transformations shifting border and political-economic relations between the EU, the UK, and the Republic of Ireland, and how are cross-border farmers adapting to such transformations?, How are local bureaucrats, politicians, and farming organizations transforming agricultural subsidies, and in what ways do they impact the governance of borderlands and the maintenance and meanings of cross-border regionalisms?, and How have changes in agricultural subsidies transformed the rural livelihoods and political practices of cross-border farmers in Northern Ireland? By asking these questions, it will advance anthropological contributions regarding borderlands, rural development, and sustainable rural communities.

While most international borders transect rural and agricultural lands, most research on borders pays scant attention to the sustainability of rural and farming communities. Borderland farmers must often navigate the policies of more than one state, yet their voices are rarely heard in policy design and implementation discussions concerning borders. Nowhere does this seem more evident than on the Irish border, the only land border the United Kingdom shares with the European Union since Brexit.

Gerald Quinn, a borderland dairy farmer from County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, explained to me how Brexit impacted agricultural subsidies and rural development in Northern Ireland and how there was little space for conversations about the sustainability of his community and the meanings of cross-border landscapes. For Quinn, farmers in Northern Ireland are in a complicated position as the Irish and British governments fail to acknowledge the cross-border nature of farming. Resources such as pastures and water sources, as well as costs and profits, tend to be shared between farmers on both sides of the border. An example of the cross-border arrangements between farmers in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is how the dairy industry relies heavily on an open border as milk produced by farmers on both sides gets processed together in the Republic of Ireland and then sold and distributed for international markets (Wilson 2020; Kakissis 2019). Similarly, other farming industries, like beef, rely on both access to markets and resources across the border, and any alteration to this can result in the economic collapse of farming communities.

For borderland farmers like Quinn, policy debates did not consider that the border region was a complex sociohistorical context distinct from other regions in Northern Ireland. In the case of borderland farmers, subsidy program changes are felt differently as their neighbors in the Irish Republic across the border still rely on support from the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Under the CAP, farmers in Northern Ireland receive their agricultural subsidies as part of the Basic Payment Schemes (BPS), which offer income support for farmers depending on the number of hectares they farm. A benefit of the CAP for Northern Ireland was not only its support for farming and rural development, but how farmers on both sides had access to the same resources and allowed markets and trade to be interconnected. After 2024, the BPS will be transformed into the Farming Sustainability Scheme (FSS), which promises to continue to offer income support as well as beef, trade, horticultural, and similar funding as the BPS. However, the emphasis will be less on supporting farming incomes and more on ways of creating a sustainable, environmental, political, and economic farming community in Northern Ireland. Furthermore, the changes in agricultural subsidies do not address the cross-border nature of farming in Northern Ireland nor how the divergence in subsidy programs will impact farmers with land on both sides of the border.

This project examines the impact of the transformation of agricultural subsidies on the everyday lives of borderland farmers in Northern Ireland as part of broader histories of crisis and conflict between Irish nationalists and unionists in the region. It analyzes how these changes in subsidy programs transform “everyday cross-border regionalism” — the everyday lives and practices of navigating between two states daily (Wilson 2024; Helleiner 2016; Strüver 2005). To understand the impacts of these changes in subsidy practices and related policies, my research will center on farming communities in the borderlands of County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, and County Monaghan, Republic of Ireland. The research asks the following interrelated questions:

1. How are agricultural policy transformations shifting border and political-economic relations between the EU, the UK, and the Republic of Ireland, and how are cross-border farmers adapting to such transformations?
2. How are local bureaucrats, politicians, and farming organizations transforming agricultural subsidies, and in what ways do they impact the governance of borderlands and the maintenance and meanings of cross-border regionalisms?  
3. How have changes in agricultural subsidies transformed the rural livelihoods and political practices of cross-border farmers in Northern Ireland?

This UK-EU land border — recreated and resignified— has seen the harshest conflicts between the Irish and British states since its inception in 1921 (Cañás Bottos 2015; Wilson 2020; Hayward 2021). The Irish borderlands have suffered the consequences of the governments of one side approving policies without understanding the impacts on the other side (Hayward 2021:75). These include infrastructural problems, heightened political conflicts, Brexit-related uncertainty, and the new divergence in agricultural subsidy regimes. Britain’s reorganization of Northern Ireland subsidy programs has been prolonged by conflicts in the local government about the region’s particular position in the United Kingdom and its relation to the European Union. The negotiations around keeping the region “open” challenge the model of how the European Union manages its land borders and, to a lesser extent, its maritime borders.

The subsidies that farmers are eligible for in Northern Ireland mirror European Union policies under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP. Now, however, they are funded by the British state. During preliminary research, I have found that the CAP, which accounts for a large portion of the European Union’s budget and maintains lower food prices for European consumers, transformed rural areas and those who inhabit them. Recent policy reforms emphasize a multifunctional approach that understands farming as one of several strategies for rural development (D’Eramo 2024; Kovacs 2021; Ketonen-Keating 2019,2017; Usherwood and Pinder 2018; Wilson 2013; Heatherington 2011). My work will contribute to broader, global discussions about agricultural politics and practices of rural communities and how transborder farmers work with and against EU subsidy policy to make their livelihood and sustain their communities.

Past Projects

1. Energizing an Archipelago: Transforming the Energy Matrix as Self-Governance in Puerto Rico

How can we study the relationship between energy, politics, and community-based organizations in times of climate change? Puerto Rico is an especially apt place to analyze these intersections. After Hurricane María in 2017, the devastation of the electrical grid affected public health, communication infrastructure, food security, productivity, and jobs, all of which complicated reconstruction. Community-based organizations, such as Casa Pueblo, based on the mountainous municipality of Adjuntas, acted as “electrical oases” by helping vulnerable residents preserve their medicines, charge their telephones and medical equipment, contact their family members, and receive news from the local and state government. Social and environmental movements of Puerto Rico have shifted their focus to energy independence, combined with the conservation of natural and forest resources. Casa Pueblo’s primary focus is helping its community to face environmental challenges. Casa Pueblo aims to make Adjuntas energetically independent from the public-sector electrical grid, especially after Hurricane María in 2017 and the privatization of the distribution of energy in 2021. This project will analyze how community-based organizations in the mountainous regions of Puerto Rico, such as Casa Pueblo in Adjuntas, rely on and promote the transformation of the energetical matrix as a mean for survival in times of political and environmental uncertainties. For them, transforming the energy, in a green and localized way, is a source of sustainable development and independence from the state-owned electrical grid.

Research questions: The questions that guide this work are: (1) How is renewable energy becoming part of Casa Pueblo’s mission as an environmental organization?; (2) How does Casa Pueblo define energy-driven community development through solar-powered infrastructure?; (3) What can the state-sponsored rural electrification process of Adjuntas explain about the current state of the energy infrastructure of the municipality?; and (4) What are the political stakes of transforming the energy matrix in a municipality like Adjuntas?

Research Methods 

This project proposes an ethnographic and historical study of community groups’ efforts to secure renewable energy sources, launch mitigation efforts, and to respond to climate change’s “slow violence” and related disasters. The research will take place between June and September 2022. Research methods include (1) ethnography and field-site visits; (2) semi-structured interviews; and (3) preliminary archival and historical research. I will consult in the historical archive documents about the rural electrification of Puerto Rico, the first attempts to transform the energy matrix in Puerto Rico, and those documents that focus on Casa Pueblo’s political and environmental praxis to analyze the electrification of Puerto Rico, the development of community-based organizations, and recent discourses of renewable energy. The Archival research will be conducted at the following archives: General Archive of Puerto Rico, the Casa Pueblo Historical Archive, and the Archive at the Center of Interdisciplinary Studies of the Coast (University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez). I will interview members of Casa Pueblo, and residents and business owners impacted by renewable energy infrastructure. 

Potential Impact of the Project 

This project will advance debates in anthropology and history about electricity and energy, sustainability, modernization, and infrastructure. Broadly, this ethnography of energy, will study how energopolitics, defined as “power over (and through) energy” (Boyer 2011), transform mutual aid strategies in Puerto Rico. The project grows out of and reflects the collaboration and hard work of citizens living in a complex sociopolitical context who aim to build a more sustainable and resilient infrastructure by using an “energopolitical” (Boyer 2011) framework, since energy shapes their relationship with nature, political activism, and environmental praxis.

2. The Times They Are A-Changin’: The Puerto Rican New Song Movement and Its Relationship with Modern Environmentalism in Puerto Rico

The Puerto Rican New Song Movement (PRNSM) surged in the 1960s, as part of a global phenomenon of cultural and political movements that were against imperialism, racism, the Vietnam War, and, among other things, environmental degradation. They were against the political status of Puerto Rico (the Commonwealth or Estado Libre Asociado, a reformed colonial status), the occupation of the islands Vieques and Culebra by the Navy of the United States of America, the transformation of the Puerto Rican landscape and natural resources, and the mining projects; while rearticulating through song-making the demands of the student marches in the University of Puerto Rico, the working class, anticolonial discourse, and the modern environmental groups. As a musical movement, the PRSNM contributed to distinctive social movements by documenting and reimagining these struggles and by participating actively in these events both on the Island and the diaspora (Cancel Bigay 2021). In this project I pay careful attention to how they construct an environmental discourse and praxis. These texts will be approached as part of an environmental culture, defined by Juan Giusti Cordero (2016) as a: “group of norms, practices, and values of the civil society that are diffused but very real and are created from the ‘the outside’ by people for the insertion on particular social context and also generated from ‘the inside,’ meaning particular experiences and practices” (730). In addition, an environmental culture should look at how humans relate to their natural environment. However, not only is the PRNSM an environmental cultural product, but it also creates an environmental discourse and advocates for environmental justice. The PRNSM makes clear that there was not only one environmental discourse or only one type of artistic activism. The songs studied will be divided into three major categories related to the environment: the exploitation and modification of the Puerto Rican landscape, the occupation and destruction of the ecosystems in Vieques and Culebra, and the mining projects.