Emory University | Department of Anthropology | Areas of Specialization | Development, Political Economy, and Sustainability

Development, Political Economy, and Sustainability

One of anthropology’s important contributions to contemporary scholarship is the illumination of the local dynamics of economic development in the context of historical, political, and economic processes. As global forces transform local ecosystems, daily life, and webs of meaning, the anthropological perspective is vital. At Emory, faculty are interested in such diverse issues as the shaping of cultural diversity through international mass media, emerging practices of postcolonial resistance, alternative structures of production and consumption, and grassroots movements toward democracy and sustainability.

The anthropology department shares connections with vibrant interdisciplinary programs at Emory that share a focus on development, political economy, and sustainability:

Our research has been located in Europe and the United States—the heartland of the world system—the emergent centers of Japan, India, and China, as well as the more agrarian and industrializing regions of the developing world. Sustainability efforts on the Emory campus, in the metro region, and around the world provide a valuable forum for the assessment of new paradigms and praxis.

Emory faculty interested in political economy have contributed to both theoretical debates in the field of development and economic anthropology and to the ethnographic illumination of local processes of survival, accommodation, and political struggle. Of particular interest are the gendered dimensions of changing work, religion, social status, and power, as women and men strategize, adapt, and make meaning in response to the intersection of global forces and local economic and political processes.

Students at Emory benefit from broad training in:

Contemporary transformations of social and cultural systems, including East African pastoralists, Caribbean infotech industry workers, transnational entrepreneurs, Central American smallholders, Andean villagers, and U.S. family farmers.
Consumption, status, and cultural fields; food systems and meaning.
Political economy of health and connections between disease, ecosystem, and development within Emory College of Arts and Sciences, the Rollins School of Public Health, the Carter Center, the Centers for Disease Control, and CARE.

Faculty in Development, Political Economy, and Sustainability Include:

Peggy Barlett | Comparative agricultural systems, sustainable food systems, sustainability in U.S. higher education, Central American and U.S. family farmers
Peter Brown | Health and development, cultural factors in global health issues, infectious disease ecology, Sardinia
Carla Freeman | Women industrial workers and entrepreneurs, Barbados, transnationalism, globalization, and gender
Craig Hadley | Food insecurity, population health, East Africa, acculturation)
Peter Little | Anthropology of development, agrarian and pastoral systems, political ecology, East Africa
David Nugent | Development and underdevelopment, politics, race and ethnicity, Latin America

Faculty whose research intersects with Development, Politcal Economy, and Sustainability include:

Debra Spitulnik | Media culture, media and the nation, discourse analysis, ethnography of communication, multilingualism