Resume

• 2018

  SOCIETY FOR APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY

  Department of Anthropology

  University of North Carolina at Greensboro

  Institute for Learning Innovation

  SOCIETY FOR APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY

• 2017

  SOUTHWESTERN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

  Human Relations Area Files

  SOUTHWESTERN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

  Research Consultant

  Institute for Learning Innovation

  San Jose State University

  San Jose

  CA

  Graduate Coordinator

  Department of Anthropology

• 2016

  Southwestern Anthropological Association (SWAA)

• 2015

  Southwestern Anthropological Association (SWAA)

  Southwestern Anthropological Association (SWAA)

  The Journal of Ethnology (China)

  Editorial Board Member

  Chengdu

  Sichuan

  China

  San Francisco Bay Area

  Associate Professor of Anthropology

  San Jose State University

  Vice President

  Southwestern Anthropological Association

  English

  Spanish

  Italian

  President’s Outstanding Emerging Scholar Award

  Western Social Science Association

• 2014

  San Jose State University

  San Jose

  CA

  Assistant Professor of Anthropology

  San Jose State University

  Collaborate in research design for a multi-site study of social networks and wellbeing in disaster-affected communities and disaster-induced resettlements in highland Ecuador. Manage fieldwork team in Ecuador

  design and administer social network and structured interviews

  conduct key informant interviews

  collect archival data

  develop and manage project database

  and collaborate in data analysis.

  Department of Anthropology

  University of North Carolina at Greensboro

  Research Consultant

  Collect archival data on livestock-related violence in northwestern Kenya and adjacent territories and plot violent cases in GIS. Retrieve and plot rainfall

  landform

  elevation

  and hydrology data in GIS and perform spatial analyses to test study hypotheses regarding the spatial distribution of livestock-related violence.

  Human Relations Area Files

  Graduate Research Assistant

  Collaborate in research design for a multi-site study of social networks and wellbeing in disaster-affected communities and disaster-induced resettlements in Mexico. Administer social network and structured interviews

  collect archival data

  develop and manage project database

  and collaborate in data analysis.

  Department of Anthropology

  University of South Florida

• 2012

  North Carolina State University

  The Journal of Ethnology (China)

  Raleigh

  North Carolina

  Post-doctoral Research Fellow

  North Carolina State University

• 2006

  Ph.D.

  Concentrations: Anthropology of Development

  Forced Displacement and Resettlement

  Disasters

  Latin America\n\nDissertation: Reciprocity and Political Power in Disaster-Induced Resettlements in the Ecuadorian Andes

  Applied Anthropology

  University of South Florida

  Economic Anthropology

  Cultural Anthropology

  Organizational Studies

  Urban Anthropology

  Ethnographic Methods

  Anthropology of Latin America

  Environmental Anthropology

  Graduate Seminar in Anthropological Theory

• 2001

  M.A

  Concentrations: Urban Anthropology

  Poverty Studies\n\nThesis: Neoliberalism and Community Organizing for Affordable Housing

  Applied Anthropology

• 1999

  B.A

  Anthropology

  Lambda Alpha National Collegiate Honor Society for Anthropology\n\nThree-time recipient of The Antoinette Bigel Endowment for Student Research in Anthropology

• Participant Observation

  Program Development

  Survey Design

  Proposal Writing

  Anthropology

  Grant Writing

  Research Design

  Teaching

  University Teaching

  GIS

  Quantitative Research

  Research

  Cultural Anthropology

  Ethnography

  SPSS

  Qualitative Research

  Social Network Analysis

  Focus Groups

  Program Evaluation

  Field Work

  Disaster Resettlement Organizations and the Culture of Cooperative Labor in the Ecuadorian Andes

  This paper explores the role of cooperative labor groups (mingas) in the political economy of disaster-induced resettlements in the Andean highlands of Ecuador and how these groups play important roles in the distribution of aid and development resources. I look at the ways in which the resettlement agencies and other institutions have worked with minga groups and highlight power relations implicated in the forms of brokerage that are produced in this encounter. In these contexts

  mingas become globalized as extensions of state and multinational processes of disaster mitigation

  resettlement

  and development. The story that unfolds here is not so much about how the cultures of social groups are changed by the interventions of state and multinational institutions

  but instead how these encounters are brokered by often powerful intermediaries whose ability to compete for scarce resources is intimately tied to institutional strategies.

  Disaster Resettlement Organizations and the Culture of Cooperative Labor in the Ecuadorian Andes

  While social network analysis continues to enjoy considerable attention

  literature on social network data collection often lacks explicit attention to methods. This presents special challenges to approaching the problems of undertaking social network analysis and of studying disaster preparedness

  planning

  and

  ultimately

  risk reduction. In this paper

  we address this issue by presenting our synthesis of several strategies for network analyses from our processes for network identification and data collection in a longitudinal study of multi-jurisdictional

  inter-agency wildfire response networks in the American Northwest. In the course of this ongoing project

  the process of detecting and collecting data on pre-existing and emergent networks in the real world was not a matter of one theoretical or empirical judgement

  but rather several. We alternated between: (1) spatio-ecological detection of jurisdictions adjacent to areas at-risk for large wildfires; (2) a hybrid approach to selecting actors and agencies identified as common participants in wildfire response networks; and (3) event-based detections of parties to specific wildfire response networks. We conclude with steps for thinking through network identification and bounding

  integrating networks

  conceptualizing rosters and ties in initial and events-based phases

  and how to manage longitudinal network data collection.\n

  Methodological considerations in pre- and post-emergency network identification and data collection for disaster risk reduction: Lessons from wildfire response networks in the American Northwest

  Hugo Yepes

  Arthur D. Murphy

  Linda M. Whiteford

  Chris McCarty

  Graham A. Tobin

  Eric C. Jones

  Issues of Gender and Sexual Orientation in Humanitarian Emergencies: Risks and Risk Reduction (Springer series on Humanitarian Solutions in the 21st Century)

  This study delves into women's roles in disasters exploring how gender and its relationships to well-being

  mental health

  and physical health face distinctive challenges in different social networks. A social network framework was employed in nine disaster-affected and resettled communities in Ecuador

  Mexico

  and the United States to better understand how gender and social support interact to impact resilience. Over 500 people

  affected by Mt. Tungurahua (central Ecuador)

  Mt. Popocatépetl (south central Mexico)

  landslides in the Caribbean coastal mountains (central Mexico)

  and several hurricanes (eastern United States) participated in lengthy interviews. Data were collected on household demographics

  health traits

  and social interactions. \n\nResults show that

  in the non-resettled sites

  network structure was much more relevant for individual well-being than in the resettled sites—the latter of which displayed high comorbidity with physical health and other stress measures—indicating that structure of social networks are indeed upset by resettlement and no longer predictive of well-being in a resettlement context. Although important variation exists between contexts

  we found that perceived support from family or spouse (but not friends)

  and having a network that is well-connected but not dense were protective factors for women

  but that providing emotional support to others was a negative factor

  as was having a higher percentage of women in one's network

  and giving. We also explore other similarities

  as well as differences between sites. The interplay of personal networks and gendered well-being following disasters helps further our understanding of the dynamics of vulnerability and thus should be considered when looking at mitigation strategies

  community sustainability and resilience.

  Articulation of Personal Network Structure with Gendered Well-Being in Disaster and Relocation Settings

  Linda M. Whiteford

  Graham A. Tobin

  Eric C. Jones

  The concept of social networks has been invoked in forced displacement and resettlement research and policy for nearly two decades. The concept is drawn upon in applied research to foster the development of resettlement policies intended to avoid destroying ‘social capital’ by preserving social networks (Cernea 1996a

  2004). However

  we hope to build upon prescriptions for maintaining “tightly-knit kin groups” (Cernea 1988:7) and “established integrated communities” (Cernea 1996a:305) where individuals act “around common interests” (Cernea 1997:1575)

  by exploring the implications of a wider variety of social structures present in both pre- and post-resettlement communities. In this brief paper

  we build a case for an approach to forced displacement and resettlement that is both relational and structural

  which we expect to prove critically explanatory both of the disarticulation of community life in resettlement and of the still broader structures within which local relations are constituted and situated. This is followed by a brief introduction to a set of basic data collection and analysis techniques. We conclude with a concise review of the practical and theoretical advantages afforded by this approach.

  Critical Aspects of Social Networks in a Resettlement Setting

  Linda M. Whiteford

  Graham A. Tobin

  Arthur D. Murphy

  Eric C. Jones

  Although virtually all comparative research about risk perception focuses on which hazards are of concern to people in different countries—regardless of whether they have directly experienced a hazard or disaster or not—much can be gained by focusing on predictors of the level of concern in particular countries and places. The comparative approach helps us carefully explore how people experience and think about extreme events by giving attention to the country in which a given event occurs

  and by investigating how relevant factors play out in a specific place. In this case

  we examine social network predictors of risk perception in a total of six sites among victims of a flood in Mexico (one site)

  and volcanic eruptions in Mexico (one site) and Ecuador (four sites). We conducted over 450 interviews with questions about the danger people feel now about what happened

  their current concerns

  and regarding their expectations about the future. We explore how aspects of the context in which people live have an effect on how strongly people perceive natural hazards in relationship with demographic

  well-being

  and social network factors. Generally

  our research indicates that levels of risk perception for past

  present and future aspects of a specific hazard are similar across these two countries and six sites. However

  these contexts produced different predictors of risk perception—in other words

  there was little overlap between sites in the variables that predicted the past

  present or future aspects of risk perception in each site. Generally

  current stress was related to perception of past danger of event in Mexico sites

  but not in Ecuador sites; network variables were mainly important for perception of past danger (rather than future or present danger)

  although specific network correlates varied from site to site across the countries.

  Cross-Cultural and Site-Based Influences on Demographic

  Well-being

  and Social Network Predictors of Risk Perception in Hazard and Disaster Settings in Ecuador and Mexico

  This paper presents a study of an Andean form of cooperation

  the minga

  in a disaster-affected community and a disaster-induced resettlement – both due to volcanic eruption – in the Andean highlands of Ecuador. I explore factors affecting the continuity of minga practice post disaster and reveal some of the largely temporal tensions between wage labor and minga practice. However

  I argue that much of the variation in inter-household minga participation was due to interventions by the state and NGOs and how these organizations structured the labor and temporal organization of mingas as a form of discipline. I further find that this dynamic is an extension of the historical role mingas have played in domination and local agency and highlight how this has important implications for disaster recovery at the household and community levels and for disaster relief and resettlement policy and practice.\nKey words: cooperation

  resettlement

  disaster

  NGOs

  Ecuador

  Enduring Cooperation: Time

  Discipline

  and Minga Practice in Disaster-induced Displacement and Resettlement in the Ecuadorian Andes

  Disaster capitalism is typically defined as a systematic and opportunistic reconfiguration of economies and economic regulations in service of capitalist interests under the cover of environmental crisis. This article offers another complementary variety of disaster capitalism—the production of capitalist subjects

  petit capitalists “empowered” by the state and nongovernmental organizations via initiation into the special knowledge and crafts of small enterprise. This is at once a well-intentioned strategy and ne that reveals the limits of neoliberal imagination—the inability to envision recovery but through individualistic

  entrepreneurial endeavors. In my study of recovery from the eruptions of Mt. Tungurahua in Ecuador

  I present cases of state and nongovernmental organizations providing aid and recovery to affected highland peasants. These projects reveal people being moved to assume certain subjectivities by limited “inventories of possibility” and an internalization of dominant norms and structures. Even as subjects posture their culture and practices as moral

  communitarian alternatives to capitalist greed

  local economic strategies took on entrepreneurial characteristics that articulated with neoliberal ambitions of state and global institutions; peasant ambitions and desires are produced and invoked as if they were locally derived

  while at the same time being co-constituted by dominant interests. I discuss how these dramas unfold

  with attention to the creative agency exercised by locals.

  Petit capitalisms in disaster

  or the limits of neoliberal imagination: Displacement

  recovery

  and opportunism in highland Ecuador

  Sun Lei

  Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to determine whether it is useful to tease apart the intimately related propositions of social production and social construction to guide thinking in the multidisciplinary study of disasters.\n\nDesign/methodology/approach: The authors address our question by reviewing literature on disasters in the social sciences to disambiguate the concepts of social production and social construction.\n\nFindings: The authors have found that entertaining the distinction between social production and social construct can inform both thinking and action on disasters by facilitating critical exercises in reframing that facilitate dialog across difference. The authors present a series of arguments on the social production and construction of disaster and advocate putting these constructs in dialog with vulnerability frameworks of the social production of disasters.\n\nOriginality/value: This commentary contributes to disambiguating important theoretical and practical concepts in disaster studies. The reframing approach can inform both research and more inclusive disaster management and risk reduction efforts.

  Social production of disasters and disaster social constructs

  This article introduces the special issue of The Annals of Anthropological Practice on “Continuity and Change in the Applied Anthropology of Risk

  Hazards

  and Disasters.” After reviewing the factors that account for the heightened anthropological attention to disasters in the early 21st century

  I review each of the contributions to the special issue. The topics included in the special issue represent some of the simultaneously perennial and currently pressing issues in the anthropology of risk

  hazards

  and disaster: vulnerability

  resilience

  culture change

  culture in practice

  risk reduction

  disaster capitalism

  and response and recovery. The objective of this special issue is to help provide an orientation to the theoretical and applied tools that will help anthropologists better prepare to assist in disaster contexts. It will assist those that may be encountering these issues for the first time

  as well as those already working in disaster-affected communities. [risk

  hazards

  disaster]

  Continuity and Change in the Applied Anthropology of Risk

  Hazards

  and Disasters

  Julie Maldonado

  Marshaling the American Anthropological Association’s UN Observer Status

  we attended the 2017 Global Platform in Cancun

  Mexico

  where we interviewed dozens of practitioners about the role of culture in disaster risk reduction

  while documenting and analyzing discussions

  formal statements

  and official documents of the multiple parties to the event. Our goals were to (a) theorize how culture becomes discursively constructed and enacted in disaster risk reduction programs; and (b) meet practitioners who could elucidate the moments when institutional mandates and community goals diverge

  where the cultures of aid and of the affected are out of sync

  and to find out what they do when that happens.

  What Can We Learn from Practitioners’ Stories?

  This article provides a brief introduction to advancements in the anthropology of disasters as well as the historical antecedents and the intellectual collaborations that contributed to contemporary work in the field. It reviews the multiple directions

  methodological approaches

  and theoretical leanings that comprise today’s diversified field of disaster anthropology and discusses how the monographs included in the special edition of Human Organization (74[4]) on the applied anthropology of risks

  hazards

  and disasters showcase the variety of topics and themes engaged by applied anthropologists who work on disaster-related issues.\n\nKey words: risk

  hazards

  disaster

  culture

  displacement

  climate change

  Applied Anthropology of Risk

  Hazards

  and Disasters

  Arthur D. Murphy

  Graham A. Tobin

  Linda M. Whiteford

  Eric C. Jones

  The devastating eruptions of Mount Tungurahua in the Ecuadorian highlands in 1999 and 2006 left many communities struggling to rebuild their homes and others permanently displaced to settlements built by state and nongovernmental organizations. For several years afterward

  households diversified their economic strategies to compensate for losses

  communities organized to promote local development

  and the state and nongovernmental organizations sponsored many economic recovery programs in the affected communities. Our study examined the ways in which gender and gender roles were associated with different levels and paths of access to scarce resources in these communities. Specifically

  this article contrasts the experiences of men and women in accessing household necessities and project assistance through formal institutions and informal networks. We found that women and men used different types of informal social support networks

  with men receiving significantly more material

  emotional

  and informational support than women. We also found that men and women experienced different challenges and advantages when pursuing support through local and extralocal institutions and that these institutions often coordinated in ways that reified their biases. We present a methodology that is replicable in a wide variety of disaster

  resettlement

  and development settings

  and we advocate an inductive

  evidence-based approach to policy

  built upon an understanding of local gender

  class

  and ethnic dynamics affecting access to formal and informal resources. This evidence should be used to build more robust local institutions that can resist wider social and cultural pressures for male dominance and gendered exclusion.

  Gendered Access to Formal and Informal Resources in Postdisaster Development in the Ecuadorian Andes

  In the study of disasters

  the concept of vulnerability has been primarily employed as a cumulative indicator of the unequal distributions of certain populations in proximity to environmental and technological hazards and an individual or group ability to “anticipate

  cope with

  resist and recover” from disaster (Wisner et al. 2004). This concept has influenced disaster research as a means to question how natural

  temporary

  and random disasters are and focused analysis on the human-environmental processes that produce disasters and subject some populations more than others to risk and hazards. Critics also point out that vulnerability frameworks elude measure

  strip people of agency

  and reify stereotypes of the Global South. In light of both the historical importance and the sustained critiques of the concept

  this chapter looks to anthropological and related literature to explore several questions: is it possible that vulnerability has outlived its usefulness? Is it still analytically meaningful for anthropologists currently working in the area of risk

  hazards

  and disasters? And what are the potential consequences or benefits that could come with conveying the concept of vulnerability to policy and decision makers? [vulnerability

  disasters

  political ecology

  discourse

  agency]

  Disaster Vulnerability in Anthropological Perspective

  There is a certain nervous excitement—an unnerving doubt—that comes over an anthropologist when they encounter well-documented practices that

  from their observations

  do not conform to the ways they have been documented. This dossier on changing practices of Andean cooperation and reciprocity is the product of several ethnographers confronting particular lapses in correspondences among practice

  representation

  and discourse. In this short introduction

  I provide a succinct orientation to the problem(s) of cooperation and reciprocity in the Andes

  followed by a brief account of some of the ethnographic encounters that provoked the dossier. This includes a description of the important role of academic networks in the processes of research

  theorizing

  and reflection. I follow this by introducing each of the contributions to this issue and conclude by pointing to some of the key cross-cutting themes that emerge from the collection. Each of these pieces speaks to the others while engaging in multiple ongoing conversations with the past

  and while I present some indication of these themes and conversations

  this overview is by no means exhaustive.

  Introduction: Twenty-First Century Dynamics of Cooperation and Reciprocity in the Andes

  Cooperative labor parties known throughout the Andes as mingas

  although outwardly appearing to be the same cultural institution

  are practiced quite differently and with varying meanings in different socioeconomic contexts. This article discusses how minga cooperation came to exhibit contrasting

  yet intimately related

  patterns of practice and social relationships in both a displaced

  disaster-affected village and a disaster-induced resettlement. It describes actors in these groups appealing to ostensibly common repertoires of shared meaning and culture

  while organizing themselves in distinct ways in order to access and control scarce resources. In one village

  minga participation is largely sustained through traditional practices of reciprocity

  while in the other they are maintained through new institutional strategies. In the former

  mingas are mobilized to compete with other villages for scarce resources; in the latter

  minga participants compete with one another.

  Reciprocity and Vernacular Statecraft: Andean Cooperation in Post-disaster Highland Ecuador

  A.J.

  Faas

  Department of Anthropology

  University of South Florida