Jeff Banister

Ph.D. Student, Geography & Regional Development

Ph.D., 2001-present, University of Arizona
MA, 1995, Latin American Studies, University of Arizona
BS, 1992, Criminal Justice, Northern Arizona University

Phone: (520) 621-2484
FAX: (520) 621-9922
E-mail: banister@email.arizona.edu

The Southwest Center
1052 N. Highland Ave.
Tucson, AZ 85721
USA

Curriculum Vitae

Research

My research examines the changing roles of the Mexican State in developing and managing agricultural water resources in Sonora's Mayo Valley irrigation district from 1926 to 1992, a period during which the federal government amassed, then lost, unprecedented political power around the control of Northwestern hydrology. The research turns on the hypothesis that the State's political authority, built on an edifice of hydro-power, could rarely, if ever, function as a top-down imposition, but instead accrued through the manifold, interlinked projects-cultural, economic, political-that reshaped the Northwest's landscapes. The struggles and negotiations that revolved around such projects, moreover, determined the course of government involvement in rural Mexican life in the post-Revolutionary period (1940 to ca. 1992).

Project Involvement

• Who's Capturing Aquaculture's Value? Shrimp Maricaulture and the State in Sonora, Mexico
• The Politics of Water and State-Formation on the Río Mayo, 1926-1992
• Stating Space in Modern Mexico (Culture, State-Formation and Mexicanist Historiography)
• The Pitayal Project: Conservation and Indigenous Livelihoods in Southern Sonora