Jose Martinez Reyes

My research in general focuses the ways that people engage, perceive, and create meanings and knowledge about the environment and how that engagement is influenced by wider networks of power relations. Based on extensive field research in Quintana Roo, Mexico, I have studied the conflicts over the management of forest resources on a Biosphere Reserve between the Maasewal Maya, local NGO’s, and the State. A manuscript detailing this research titled “Moral Ecology of a Forest: The Nature Industry and Maya Post-Conservation” was published by the University of Arizona Press in November 2016.

I have also conducted research on community management of forests and the transformations of forest landscape in Puerto Rico.

My current research focuses on the global production, consumption, and management of Honduras Mahogany (swietenia macrophylla), in Mexico and Fiji, from forest plantations to the materiality of guitar making and playing.