Assistant Professor , University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Contributor, Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
About Alex
Alex A. Moulton is an assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His research pursues critical understandings of human-environment processes within the context of global economic and environmental change. The themes of his research include climate change, environmental justice, resource governance, ethics of care, resilience, reparations, and Black geographies. Moulton draws on insights from Environmental Sociology, Political Ecology, and Environmental Geography, and combines interview-based field research, discourse analysis, archival research, with historical-geographical comparative analysis. His work has been published in EPD: Society and Space, Geography Compass, Caribbean Geography, Sociology Compass, Journal of Political Ecology, and Journal of Extreme Events, and in edited volumes.
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Contributions to Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
View all of Alex's posts on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.
Black Geographies: New Maroon Studies and the Politics of Place
Jamaican Maroons are the descendants of Africans who escaped enslavement on plantations in the early colonial period. Mentions of the Maroons in the colonial record begin around 1655, when the British, having routed the Spanish from Jamaica, started facing fierce guerrilla resistance from groups of Africans who had established free communities in the hills. The Maroon population grew as frequent revolts on the plantations facilitated the flight to freedom in the hills. The British unsuccessfully tried to subdue the Maroons by force of arms. Ultimately, they signed peace treaties with the leaders of the two main Maroon groups in 1739. The treaties included land grants and recognition of Maroon autonomy, but also included stipulations that the Maroons help capture runaways and subdue revolts in the future. (more…) (read more...)