website / brent mcccusker / research

Most people clicking on this page want me to give them a few terms (objects) under which my work can be placed. It is a fact of academic life, I admit. In narrative form, I am concerned with how the environment is produced, reproduced, and commodified to promote development in historically lesser developed areas (not just Africa, mind you). I have come to the conclusion that one of the most fundamental problems facing the environment is capitalism itself, thus putting me squarely in the James/Martin O'Connor camp of green Marxist theory. I have been accused of being a "Marxist" for some time and by and large, the accusation is true. "Pre-post-Marxist" might be more accurate since while I have been convinced that class struggle is important, I don't see it as the exclusive motor force of history, nor the only contradiction of capital - probably the most important, but not sole motor force - necessary but not sufficient.

To be clear, however, I have yet to embrace the nihilism and anti-theoretical positions of the post-structuralists/ post-modernists. I abhor the reification of everything local, the elevation of discourse as the primary object of study, the micro-focused, non-generalizable nature of "post-"research and the complete lack of attention paid to the real systemic contradictions of late capitalism. I do readily admit that Marxist theorizing was far too class-centric and economically deterministic and that Marxists need to do a better job of expanding upon Marx's writings rather than elevating them to the status of scripture.

My research is focused in two areas (environment/development) with an interest in methods, demonstrated by my recent publications. Since my knowledge is now controlled by corporations that won't let me reproduce my own thinking on this website, I can only refer you to what I have written (yes, I do have a "please take down the pdf" e-mail):

Understanding how land use ....

> McCusker, B. and Fraser, A. 2008. Land Reform in the Era of Neoliberalism: Case Studies from the Global South. The Geographical Review 98(3): iii-vi.

> Moseley, W. and McCusker, B. 2008. Fighting the Fire with a Broken Tea Cup: South Africa’s Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development Programme. The Geographical Review 98(3): 322-338.

> McCusker, B. 2008. Competing and Conflicting Social Constructions of ‘Land’ in South Africa: The Case of and Implications for Land Reform.  Environmental Contentions. (eds. Goodman, Evered, and Boykoff) Hampshire, UK: Ashgate.

> McCusker, B., and Ramadzuli, M. 2007. Apartheid Spatial Engineering and Land Use Change in Mankweng, South Africa: 1963-1997. The Geographical Journal. 173(1): 56-74.

> McCusker, B. 2004. Land Use Change on Recently Redistributed Farms in the Northern Province, South Africa. Human Ecology 32(1): 49-75.

.....and livelihood systems are co-produced in sub-Saharan Africa through the  .....

.....integration of geo-spatial technologies and political ecology.         

>  McCusker, B. and Schmitz, P. 2008. Modeling Land Reform Potential in Limpopo, South Africa. South African Geographical Journal 90(2): 80-96.

> Hawthorne, T. L., Dougherty, M., Elmes, G., Fletcher, C., McCusker, B., Pinto, M., and Weiner, D. 2006. Beyond the Public Meeting: Building a Field-Based Participatory Geographic Information System for Land Use Planning in Monongalia County, West Virginia. S. Balram & S. Dragicevic (Eds.), Collaborative Geographic Information Systems. USA : Idea Group Inc.

> McCusker, B. and Weiner, D. 2003. GIS Representations of Nature, Political Ecology, and Land Use and Land Cover Change in South Africa. Political Ecology: An Integrative Approach to Geography and Environment-Development Studies.(eds) K. Zimmerer and T. Bassett. New York: Guilford Press.