Brian Marks
Ph.D. Student, Geography & Regional Development
M.A. 2005, Geography, University of Arizona
B.A. 2003, History, Louisiana State University
Out of the country during 2007-2008
Room 421, Harvill Building
Tucson, AZ 85721-0076
USA
Phone: (520) 621-1652
FAX: (520) 621-2889
E-mail: bmarks1@email.arizona.edu
Curriculum Vitae
Personal home page
Research
My research is primarily about small-scaled commodity producers in coastal
regions and globalization, specifically questions of household economy,
human/environment interaction, and agrarian political economy. I conducted
research with commercial shrimp fishers in South Louisiana in 2004. These
shrimpers are facing extremely low prices (a 30-50% drop in price since 2001,
to a lower real price [adjusted for inflation] than they received in 1950.) The
principal reason for this price collapse is the expansion of shrimp imports to
the U.S. market. One conclusion of this research is that Louisiana shrimpers
have drawn increasingly on household resources (unwaged labor of family
members, family assets such as equity in homes, savings) that are normally
devoted to social reproduction (taking care of family needs) to maintain their
participation in household commodity production (to keep fishing). In other
words, households shift resources out of the family and into the economy in
order to make good on losses of cash income they suffer from low prices. This
shift to 'self-exploitation' is an invisible subsidy to commodity production as
it allows households to continue producing at de facto wage levels below that
necessary to support the household on shrimping income alone. Promising
solutions to these problems include income diversification, especially
assistance to shrimpers' wives in seeking better livelihoods, changing how
products are marketed and sold (quality improvement, cooperatives, price
premiums through social or environmental certification) and/or price regulation
(tariffs, subsidies, or international commodity agreements).
I am currently pursuing a doctoral dissertation project on shrimp
aquaculturalists in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam and the role of household
economies in export-oriented agro-food production. Shrimp farmers in Vietnam
face four major challenges to sustaining production: Shrimp diseases, falling
international shrimp prices, higher capitalization and intensification of
production, and increasing quality requirements in export markets. These
challenges pose particular problems for household producers who are less
capable of accessing investment capital or operating enterprises of larger
scale. This project seeks to understand if production of farmed shrimp in
Vietnam by households will be sustained in light of these challenges, and if so
by what means. This work relates to earlier research in Louisiana in that both
regions are significant producers of shrimp and other seafoods, most seafood
production in Vietnam and Louisiana is accomplished by household producers,
international price declines cause problems for producer livelihoods, and
restructuring of the seafood industry is underway in light of the kinds of
challenges mentioned above. This project's broader intention is to understand
means by which small-scale seafood producers can maintain their livelihoods
into the future and how they can affect the course of development of the
seafood industry to their benefit.
Project Involvement
- Effects of economic restructuring on household commodity production in the Louisiana shrimp fishery (2003-2007)
- Resilience against market instability of household commodity producers for export-oriented markets (2007-2009)
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