The Culture, Resources, and Power Program (CRP) involves faculty and graduate students in socio-cultural and linguistic anthropology. CRP faculty situate their research within contemporary processes of globalization, examining the intersections of global and local forces and the new practices and politics that emerge at those intersections. CRP members pursue problem-focused, policy-relevant research, driven by real-world problems as well as emerging trends in social theory. Their research and teaching integrate several interrelated thematic areas: local, national, and transnational identities; political ecology and sustainability; economic development and social policy; social justice and human rights; language, discourse, and power; and the production of knowledge.

Societies worldwide are experiencing changes associated with globalization. Political-economic reforms that facilitate the circulation of capital and commodities across national borders have deepened the involvement of people around the world in global markets. New communications technologies instantly transmit information and images across long distances. And ever more people are crossing borders as migrants, investors, development experts, corporate consultants, activists, or tourists.

As capital and commodities, ideas and images, travelers and technologies circulate more rapidly, local identities and practices are increasingly shaped through the interplay of local and non local forces. We focus on the complex relationship between forms of control and forms of resistance that arise at the intersections of global and local forces. These intersections give rise to new possibilities for the negotiation of alternative identities, practices, and politics. In many instances local activism and social mobilization have become linked to movements that are global in scope. At the same time, processes of globalization multiply the number of channels through which power can work on local communities, generating the potential for increased oppression.

In light of these transformations, cultures cannot be understood as bounded, well integrated wholes. Instead of relying on a single, internally coherent culture to organize their lives, people around the world draw upon -- or find themselves subject to -- multiple sources of knowledge and meanings that offer alternative ways to make sense of their experiences. Some forms of knowledge resonate with one another; others compete with one another.

These changes have altered anthropological practice. As we ask new questions, we have also redefined the boundaries of our field sites to follow people in motion or to investigate the multiple forces that impinge on local communities. Further, we as anthropologists are caught up in the same processes that shape the experiences, interpretations, and actions of those we study. Accordingly, CRP faculty work collaboratively with communities, civic organizations, NGOs, and university researchers in the countries where we do research. We also reflexively examine our discipline's role in setting the terms of local and international debates and the roles we play in constructions and explanations of the issues we study.

CRP faculty and graduate students pursue problem focused research, redefining anthropological holism to encompass the many contradictory forces at work in our field sites. As a part of problem-focused research, many CRP faculty work collaboratively with researchers from other disciplines who are addressing similar problems. Numerous centers on campus facilitate such cross-disciplinary work, including the Center for Great Lakes Culture, the Center for Medical Ethics, the Julian Samora Research Institute, the American Indian Studies Program, and six federally funded National Resource Centers: the African Studies Center, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Asian Studies Center, the Center for the Advanced Study of International Development, the Women and International Development Program, and the Center for Language Education and Research.

focus on the themes listed below. We emphasize the interrelationships among these topics, and most CRP faculty integrate several of these themes in their research and teaching.

Movements of capital, people, ideas, and images across borders have opened new possibilities for the construction of collective identities and for mobilization around identities. Thus, we explore the construction of new forms of identity that cross national boundaries, as well as the negotiation of local and national identities. We explore both the imposition of identity categories to oppress and the use of collective identities by groups organizing to empower themselves. We explore how identities such as ethnicity are performed. And we are attentive to intersecting dimensions of identity, such as the construction of diasporic identities across generations, the tensions between racialized and ethnic identities, the interplay of gender with ethnicity, and the positioning of minority and indigenous groups in relation to the nation-states in which they reside.

Faculty: Davis, Ferguson, Hunt, Leichtman, Louie, Medina

As processes of globalization alter relationships between people and their environments, struggles over environmental resources are becoming more widespread, and threats to sustainable livelihoods are growing. We explore how policies for the allocation and management of natural resources are formulated through negotiations and conflicts among national governments, transnational development and conservation donors, transnational corporations, and local communities mobilizing to protect and control their resource bases. We consider how issues of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and age influence people's access to resources and their voice in decision making bodies in relation to topics such as biodiversity conservation, water resource management, eco tourism, regenerative agriculture, and land redistribution. We explore whether and how human rights based approaches can be used for protecting access to water and rural livelihoods by the world’s rural poor.

Faculty: Derman, Ferguson, Medina

We explore programs of planned change within the US and around the world, focusing on ideological and practical struggles over the goals, practices, and assessment of development policies and social policies more broadly. We take a dual view of policy: we explore the ideas and rationales that shape the practices of government agencies, businesses, NGOs, social service institutions, and their targets; and we examine the consequences of development projects and public policy choices. We use multi-sited fieldwork to incorporate the range of actors and forces that shape specific development interventions and social policies.

Faculty: Derman, Ferguson, Medina

Human rights organizations that operate across national boundaries and transnational movements for social justice are altering political landscapes. Our work addresses the tensions between cultural differences and efforts to define universal standards for human rights and social justice. We explore how discourses and institutions of international justice challenge traditional relationships between states and their citizens and indigenous peoples. Working at the interface of theory and practice, we study how anthropological theory and methods contribute to understanding the force of law in local, national, and global arenas. We consider how people use control over resources and representations to maintain current patterns of political and economic dominance, and how people elaborate alternative systems of discourse and practice to challenge current distributions of wealth, power and privilege.

Faculty: Davis, Derman, Drexler, Ferguson, Hunt, Medina

Anthropologists and social scientists in general are increasingly aware of the significance of language in human activities, and the way that language mediates and shapes relationships between individuals and between individuals and social institutions. We explore the role of language in the production and use of power, knowledge, meaning, and identities. We study discourse as both structure and event to reveal how power works through language. In addition to addressing theoretical issues, we apply this approach to issues of practical concern through our work with heritage language education programs.

Faculty: Drexler and Morgan

We investigate how different kinds of knowledge are produced by academics, professionals, and politicians, as well as by the indigenous, local, and lay groups anthropologists have traditionally studied. Power is involved in the way people produce, access, and use knowledge. We study how people negotiate the production of knowledge across cultural, geographic, or disciplinary boundaries. We engage in collaborations with professionals such as engineers, physicians, and academics participating in local, national, and cross-national projects. We study government agencies, NGOs, and service providers working with local communities to plan, implement, and evaluate projects in areas such as health, development, and conservation. We also work directly with local communities seeking to maintain their languages and traditional knowledge.

Faculty: David, Derman, Drexler, Ferguson, Hunt, Louie, Medina, and Morgan

In addition to department requirements, CRP students take the Culture, Resources, and Power seminar (ANP 823). In consultation with their advisors, students select additional courses on the topics listed above, as well as courses in methods, research design, data analysis, and writing. In addition to coursework, CRP convenes informal seminars to discuss members’ current research or practical issues related to the professional development of graduate students.