Moberg, Mark 1959- (Mark Alfred Moberg)

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Moberg, Mark 1959- (Mark Alfred Moberg)

PERSONAL:

Born April 11, 1959, in Palatine, IL; son of Alfred R., Jr. (an engineer) and June D. (a homemaker) Moberg; married, 1992; wife's name Debra (divorced, 1998); married Tawnya Sesi (a pastoral associate), 2000; children: Angela E. Ethnicity: "White." Education: University of Iowa, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1980; University of California, Los Angeles, M.A., 1983, Ph.D., 1988. Politics: "Progressive." Religion: Roman Catholic. Hobbies and other interests: Photography, nature.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Chickasaw, AL. Office—Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, University of South Alabama, Mobile, AL 36688. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of Georgia, Athens, visiting assistant professor of anthropology, 1988-89; University of South Alabama, Mobile, assistant professor, 1989-95, associate professor, 1995-98, professor of anthropology, 1998—. Quest for Social Justice, Inc., president, 2006—; Mobile Area Interfaith Council, member of board of directors, 2006. Conference participant; teacher of classes for school children and senior citizens; public speaker; guest on media programs; conducted field research in St. Lucia, Belize, and Alabama.

MEMBER:

American Anthropological Association, Society for Applied Anthropology (fellow), Society for the Anthropology of Work, Southern Anthropological Society (member of executive board, 1996-2001; president, 2000-01), Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fulbright fellow, 1985-86; grant from Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium, 1989-90; grants from National Endowment for the Humanities, 1990 (for Belize), 1995; grants from National Science Foundation, 1992-94, 1997-99, 2002-05; support from Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 1999-2000.

WRITINGS:

Citrus, Strategy, and Class: The Politics of Development in Southern Belize, University of Iowa Press (Iowa City, IA), 1992.

Myths of Ethnicity and Nation: Immigration, Work, and Identity in the Belize Banana Industry, University of Tennessee Press (Knoxville, TN), 1997.

(Editor, with Steve Striffler, and contributor) Banana Wars: Power, Production, and History in the Americas, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2003.

Slipping Away: Banana Politics and Fair Trade in the Caribbean, Berghahn Books (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to books, including Anthropology and Institutional Economics, edited by James Acheson, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 1994; Anthropological Contributions to Conflict Resolution, edited by Alvin W. Wolfe and Honggang Yang, University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 1996; Cultural Diversity in the South: Anthropological Contributions to a Region in Transition, edited by Carole E. Hill and Patricia Beaver, University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 1998; Asians in America: The Peoples of Southeast and South Asia in American Life and Culture, edited by Franklin Ng, Garland Publishing (Hamden, CT), 1998; and Communities and Capital: Local Struggles against Corporate Power and Privatization, edited by Thomas Collins and John Wingard, University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 2000. Contributor of articles and reviews to scholarly journals, including Journal of Latin American Studies, American Ethnologist, International Journal of Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies, Journal of Developing Areas, Maritime Studies in Anthropology, Ethnohistory, Dialectical Anthropology, and Human Organization.

SIDELIGHTS:

Mark Moberg told CA: "My work centers on remote but dynamic small-scale farming communities in the Caribbean and Central America. Most of my writing adopts as a central focus the intersection of history, class, and the environment at the local level with global political economic forces. I am inspired in my research by the persistent efforts of the rural poor, those whom James Scott once dubbed ‘history's losers,’ to craft lives of greater opportunity and justice despite long odds in a global system characterized by widening disparities of power and wealth. I view my scholarly work as a counterpart to my participation in peace and social justice organizations, with which I have worked for more than three decades. While my writing owes much to the influence of scholars such as Eric Wolf and James Scott, it is inspired as well by the legacy of those such as Dorothy Day and Oscar Romero, whose spiritual work offers a guide to reclaiming the humanity of a too-often inhuman world."