Bri Matusovsky's dissertation research follows green monkeys (Chlorocebus Sabaeus), invasive pests on the island of St. Kitts, a primarily Black Caribbean island with small minorities of wealthy white and East Indian residents who control a significant amount of its wealth and resources. Green monkeys were introduced as a by-product of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and are now differently valued in scientific research, tourism, and conservationism. The increasing frequency of encounters between humans and monkeys, and related food insecurity experienced by both humans and monkeys, is known locally on St. Kitts as “the monkey problem”. The monkey problem is ultimately an unsolvable ethical, environmental, and social issue. Investigating the notion of monkeys as a problem reveals how larger social, historical colonial, and racial structures of inequality continue to affect our more-than-human world.
Department and Institution:
Medical Anthropology, UCSF-UC Berkeley
Bio/CV:
