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Marion W. Dixon, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Sociology
Coordinator of Interdisciplinary Studies and International Studies


Contact Information

Education

  • Bachelor of Arts, Political Science, University of Michigan
  • Master of Science, Development Sociology, Cornell University
  • Doctor of Philosophy, Development Sociology, Cornell University

Courses Taught

  • Agriculture and Food Systems
  • Sociological Foundations 
  • Governments and Politics of the Middle East
  • Introduction to Global Cultural Studies
  • World Cultures
  • Power, Politics, and Society

Background

Marion W. Dixon, Ph.D., is an associate professor of sociology in the Department of Literature, Culture and Society and coordinator of interdisciplinary studies and international studies at Point Park University. She completed her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and studied abroad at Saint Petersburg State University in Russia and the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Following her undergraduate education, she joined the Peace Corps in Morocco. Then, she completed both her Masters and Ph.D. in the Department of Development Sociology at Cornell University. Prior to joining Point Park, she taught in the School of International Service at American University in Washington, DC.

Dixon's book manuscript, The Frontiers of Corporate Food in Egypt [Oxford University Press], examines the growth of corporations in agriculture and food in Egypt during the period of globalization. This project uses mixed qualitative methods, including fieldwork in Egypt between 2008 and 2012, to trace networks of actors, institutions and policies in agriculture and food at multiple scales.

Curriculum Vitae 

Research Interests

  • Agriculture 
  • Food 
  • International Development
  • Middle East and North Africa
  • World-Ecology
  • Nature-Society Relations

Selected Publications

  • Dixon, M. W. The Frontiers of Corporate Food in Egypt. Oxford University Press. 2023.
  • 'Eek! What the Chick? Addressing the Issues of Industrial Poultry in Egypt.' Tiny Beam Fund, Inc., Issue Lab (open access repository), 2023.
  • 'Phosphate fock frontiers: Nature, labor, and imperial states, 1870 – WWII,' Critical Historical Studies 8(2): 271-303. 2021.
  • Invited review of Food Insecurity and Revolution in the Middle East and North Africa: Agrarian Questions in Egypt and Tunisia, by Habib Ayeb and Ray Bush, Journal of Development Studies. 2021.
  • 'Agrarian Question Revisited: Smallholders and Corporate Food in Egypt,' special issue ‘Food Security and the Contested Visions of Agrarian Change in Africa,' Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 2020.

  • ‘Chemical fertilizer in transformations in world agriculture and the state system, 1870 to the interwar period’. Journal of Agrarian Change 18(4): 768-786, 2018.

  • ‘Riding on Waves of Crises: Finance, Food, and Political Tumult in Egypt’. In Financialisation, Food Systems and Rural Transformation, edited by H. Bjørkhaug, A. Magnan, and G. Lawrence, pp. 135-155. New York: Routledge, 2018.

  • ‘Plastics and Agriculture in the Desert Frontier’. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 37(1): 86-102. 2017.

  • ‘Biosecurity and the Multiplication of Crises in the Egyptian Agri-food Industry’. Geoforum 61: 90-100. 2015.

Selected Conference Presentations

  • ‘Food Crises and Revolt’, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, New York, N.Y. Aug. 10-13, 2019.

  • ‘Chemical Fertilizer in the Making of National Agricultures and National Industries, 1870 – WWII’, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, August 11-14, 2018.

  • The modern world economy: frontiers, ecology, commodities’, International Studies Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, April 4-7, 2018.

  • ‘Land Reclamation and Expanded Commodity Production in the Longue Durée’, Third Annual Conference of the World-Ecology Research Network, Binghamton University, July 21-22, 2017.

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