Education

Ph.D., Southern Methodist University, 1989

Research Interests

Socio-Cultural Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, Cultural Ecology, Political Economy, Bangladesh, Ecuador, South Florida Refugees and Immigrants

My work in anthropology is motivated by my interest in making anthropology relevant to contemporary social problems. In general, I am most interested in how anthropology can be used to address such disparate issues as health and disease patterns, inequality, and environmental degradation. Most of my work has focused on the human-environment interaction, particularly examining how people use land in subsistence practices, how access to land changes over the course of a household’s life cycle, and through inheritance practices. From this basic focus on land use, my research extends out to economic and political processes as well as issues of health and illness (especially childhood disease and mortality).