Jeffrey Banister

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Scholarly Contributions

Books

• Fitzsimmons, R., Banister, J., Nabhan, G. P., & Alvarez, M. L. (2012). Hungry for Change: Borderlands Food and Water in the Balance.. Tucson, AZ: The Southwest Center’s Kellogg Program in Sustainable Food Systems.

Journals/Publications

• Banister, J. (2017). The Shifting Geopolitics of Water in the Anthropocene. Geopolitics-Forum. doi:dx.doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2017.1282279
• Clarke-Sather, A., Crow-Miller, B., Banister, J. M., Thomas, K. A., Norman, E. S., & Stephenson, S. R. (2017). The shifting geopolitics of water in the anthropocene. Geopolitics, 22(Issue 2). doi:10.1080/14650045.2017.1282279
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  This forum responds to recent calls to hypothesize a geopolitics of the Anthropocene by examining how our notions of geopolitics of water may shift in the context of this new and, at times, divisive framework. The Anthropocene describes the geological epoch in which humans are the dominant actor in the global environmental system and has been a concept that is not without controversy. Taking the Anthropocene as an epistemological divergence where nature can no longer be viewed as separate from humanity, this forum asks how moving away from understanding hydraulic systems as essentially stable to understanding them as unstable and profoundly influenced by humans changes our understanding ofthe geopolitics of water. Collectively the contributions to this forum illustrate that formulating a water geopolitics of the Anthropocene requires 1) moving beyond a focus on fluvial flows to consider other forms of water; 2) broadening our understanding of the actors involved in water geopolitics; 3) examining new geopolitical tactics, particularly those grounded in law; 4) engaging critically with new and emerging forms of visualization and representation in the geopolitics of water, and; 5) examining how the notion of the Anthropocene has been used towards geopolitical ends and worked to elide different positionalities.
• Soto, V. (2016). Building Cities, Constructing Citizens: Sustainable Rural Cities in Chiapas, Mexico. Journal of Latin American Geography, 35. doi:10.1353/lag.2016.0004
• Widdifield, S. (2015). A Visual History of Water in Mexico City: Modernity and Memorial. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin America History. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199366439.013.305
• Banister, J. (2015). Patria Fugáz: The Troubled Birth of Hydraulic Populism on Sonora’s Río Mayo, 1910 to 1934. Journal of the Southwest. doi:10.1353/jsw.2015.0001
• Banister, J. (2015). You and What Army? Violence, the State, and Mexico's War on Drugs. Territory, Politics, Governance. doi:10.1080/21622671.2015.1064251
• Banister, J. M., Boyce, G. A., & Slack, J. (2015). Illicit economies and state(less) geographies: The politics of illegality. Territory, Politics, Governance, 3(Issue 4). doi:10.1080/21622671.2015.1064251
• Boyce, G. A., Banister, J. M., & Slack, J. (2015). You and what army? Violence, the state, and Mexico’s war on drugs. Territory, Politics, Governance, 3(Issue 4). doi:10.1080/21622671.2015.1058723
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  In late 2010, WikiLeaks made public hundreds of private communications between US State Department facilities in Mexico and Washington, DC. The documents contain frank observations made by US bureaucrats and officials about Mexican politics and government, but are especially pointed in their treatment of Mexico’s declared ‘War on Drugs’, which, since 2006, has been the focus of unprecedented negotiation, cooperation, and tension between the two governments. With a few notable exceptions, geographers have largely stayed away from the study of illegal practices, and relatively little research in this area employs an explicitly spatial analytic. In this paper, we examine how the spatialization of the drug phenomenon operates as an official strategy of intervention - illicit phenomena like the illegal drug trade are rendered in spatial terms in order to become amenable to specific kinds of state intervention. This requires considerable boundary work, and we draw from the WikiLeaks archive to explore how state actors continuously work to materially and discursively isolate trafficking from a larger social, political and institutional context. The paper concludes with a discussion of the contradictory and incoherent narratives and conditions that constantly threaten to overflow these constructed boundaries, along with the structuring assumptions of the drug war.
• Kelly, S. -. (2015). A state of suspended animation: Urban sanitation and water access in Nogales, Sonora. Political Geography. doi:dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2015.04.002
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  Collaborative with Ph.D. student Sarah Kelly
• Banister, J. -. (2014). Are You Wittfogel or are You Against him? Hydro-sociality, Aridity, and the State. Geoforum, 57, 205-214. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.03.004
• Banister, J. M. (2014). Are you Wittfogel or against him? Geophilosophy, hydro-sociality, and the state. Geoforum, 57(Issue). doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.03.004
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  Recent explorations of the "hydrosocial" cycle draw inspiration from Wittfogel's basic concern with politics, power, and centralized authority, but move well beyond the limitations of previous scholarship. Most importantly, they have (re)introduced a conception of the social into the hydrological, and grappled with water's materiality in ecumenical and creative ways. Understanding hydro-sociality requires an ontological approach to matter, flux, and flow. Water is the "universal solvent," which makes it infinitely capable of mutation and connection. Yet, such indeterminacy proves difficult to capture in research and writing. Here I pinpoint some of the politico-discursive strengths of the hydrosocial approach, and also where I think its already strong ontological inclinations could be further developed. I draw from work in the area of "geophilosophy" as a way to explore hydro-sociality as a nonlinear process, developing a historicized account of irrigation politics, the flows of matter, and nonlinear dynamics in northwest Mexico's Río Mayo Valley.
• Widdifield, S. -. (2014). The Debut of Modern Water in Early 20th Century Mexico City: The Xochimilco Potable Waterworks. Journal of Historical Geography. doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2014.09.005
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  ;Collaborative with faculty member at UA: Yes;Full Citation:Journal of Historical Geography
• Banister, J. -. (2012). Diluvios de Grandeza: Agua, Territorio y Poder en El Rio Mayo, 1880-1910. Región y Sociedad, 24(3).
• Banister, J. -. (2012). Towards a "New Culture of Water" on Sonora's Rio Mayo. The Southwestern Geographer, 15.
• Banister, J. -. (2011). Deluges of Grandeur: Water, Territory, and Power On Northwest Mexico’s Río Mayo, 1880-1910. Water Alternatives, 4(1).
• Banister, J. M. (2011). Deluges of grandeur: Water, territory, and power on northwest Mexico's Río Mayo, 1880-1910. Water Alternatives, 4(Issue 1).
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  Northwest Mexico's irrigation landscape, known today as El Distrito de Riego 038, or El Valle del Mayo, issues from historical struggles to build an official order out of a diverse world of signs, symbols, processes, places, and peoples. It is the ancestral home of the Yoreme (Mayo), an indigenous group for whom colonisation and agricultural development have meant the loss of autonomy and of the seasonal mobility required to subsist in an arid land. It is also the birthplace of President Álvaro Obregón, a one-time chickpea farmer who transformed late-19th century irrigation praxis into the laws and institutions of 20th century water management. Reshaping territory for the ends of centralising ('federalising') water resources has always proved exceedingly difficult in the Mayo. But this was particularly so in the beginning of the federalisation process, a time of aggressive modernisation under the direction of President Porfirio Díaz (1876-1910). Research on Mexican hydraulic politics and policy, with some important exceptions, has tended to focus on the scale and scope of centralisation. Scholars have paid less attention to the moments and places where water escapes officials' otherwise ironclad grasp. This paper explores water governance (and state formation more broadly) in the late 19th century, on the eve of Mexico's 1910 Revolution, as an ongoing, ever-inchoate series of territorial claims and projects. Understanding the weaknesses and incompleteness of such projects offers critical insight into post-revolutionary and/or contemporary hydraulic politics.
• Banister, J. (2009). Publishing the Southwest. Journal of the Southwest, 51(Issue 4).
• Scott, C. -. (2008). The Dilemma of Water Management 'Regionalization' in Mexico under Centralized Resource Allocation. Water Resources Development, 24(1). doi:10.1080/07900620701723083
• Scott, C. A., & Banister, J. M. (2008). The dilemma of water management 'regionalization' in Mexico under centralized resource allocation. International Journal of Water Resources Development, 24(Issue 1). doi:10.1080/07900620701723083
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  Mexico's evolving water management framework is predicated on: (1) integration of water resources planning and management; (2) decentralization from federal to 'regional' (river basin) levels; and (3) privatization of service provision. This paper focuses on Mexico's recurring federal-regional tensions, highlighting the historical case of the Yaqui River, and analyzing the current decentralization impasse. Although important advances have been made with irrigation management transfer, river basin councils, nascent user participation in groundwater management, and water and energy legislation, integrated water resources management (IWRM) remains an elusive goal, principally due to inherent institutional and procedural contradictions in water resource allocation. The next steps in the Mexican model - to open decision making to public scrutiny and devolve allocation of water and financial resources - will prove the most difficult, more because of entrenched interests than for lack of an 'IWRM roadmap'.
• Banister, J. (2007). Stating Space in Modern Mexico. Political Geography, 26. doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2006.12.003
• Banister, J. M. (2007). Stating space in modern Mexico. Political Geography, 26(Issue 4). doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2006.12.003
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  This paper critiques the largely Anglophone "New Cultural History" (NCH) written on post-revolutionary Mexico, calling for a more robust theoretical and methodological approach to the state than scholars have thus far employed. Earlier trends, each of course inflected with the politics of their times, remained fastened upon the purportedly unified force of Mexican officialdom. Revisionist narratives tended to abstract the state from social and cultural belief and practice. As such, scholars' grasp of social change was weakened by their failure to see politics, culture, and society as interrelated processes. Nevertheless, the closer examination of popular culture stressed by some contemporary historians-an undeniably important analytical tack-still does not obviate the need for a solid, at times even central, focus on processes of state-formation. Herein, I review some of the critical contributions to a growing multidisciplinary field of state/culture studies, and from critical human geography, and suggest ways their insights might be useful for historians and historical geographers focusing on the post-revolutionary Mexican state. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Reviews

• Banister, J. -. (2011. Review for the Annals of the Association of American Geographers: Contentious Geographies: Environmental Knowledge, Meaning, and Scale.
• Banister, J. -. (2009. Review for Water History: Notarios y agricultores: crecimiento y atraso en el campo mexicano, 1780-1920.

Others

• Banister, J. -. (2014, November). Among Yoris and Guariios. Journal of the Southwest.
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  This is a 200-pp. translation of a book that has now been accepted for publication in Journal of the Southwest for Autumn 2014. I have completed the translation and am working on edits with the author, Dr. Teresa Valdivia, at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).;Full Citation: Journal of the Southwest;Status: book-length journal manuscript translation in Preparation;