Micah M. Trapp

Biography

Dr. Micah Trapp received her Ph.D. in anthropology from American University in 2011. Her dissertation research focused on transnational household economies, status, and the migratory experiences of Liberian refugees in light of the enduring impact of the American Colonization Society's settlement of Liberia. This research was conducted at the Buduburam Liberian refugee camp in Ghana and addressed the complex processes associated with the shifts from formal to informal aid in a long-term camp and the eventual UNHCR cessation clause of refugee status for Liberians. Her more recent work has focused on taste and the politics of necessity in food assistance programming. As an applied anthropologist, Dr. Trapp has worked for two refugee resettlement agencies in the US and has also worked on a USAID evaluation team. In 2013, Dr. Trapp began conducting ethnographic research at grocery auctions in Southern Maryland and in the Mid-South region. Situated at the crux of the industrialized food system and alternative food movements, this work explores the tension between conformity and resistance in the value of food at the grocery auction. Drawing upon Nancy Munn's transformational theory of value (and attendant notions of communal, positive, negative, and subversive value) and David Graeber's ethnographic theory of value, I argue that the communal value of the deal at the grocery auction becomes political through the production of refurbished commodities that do not simply reproduce the capitalist, industrialized food system, but render its exploits and inequalities visible.

Research Interest

Refugees, migration, humanitarianism, development, political economy of food, industrialized food system, taste, and household food economies.