DR. JULIA PALEY, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, received funding to aid research on 'The Multiple Meanings of Democracy: Indigenous Movements and Development Agencies in Ecuador.' This research studied five collective actors operating in Ecuador -- two development agencies, two indigenous organizations, and the municipal government of a highland county that has won international awards for participatory democracy. The study aimed to answer three questions: 1) What are the meanings of participation for these collective actors?

RITA OENNING DA SILVA, then a student at Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianopolis, Brazil, was awarded funding in May 2006 to aid research on 'Child Performers on the Street,' supervised by Dr. Esther Jean Langdon. Based on research with children that dance and sing on the streets of Recife, Brazil, the project shows how children living in the violent context of the favelas perceive themselves and are perceived by the local neighborhood and international audiences.

'Autobiographical and Biographical Narratives in Lowland South America: Unexpected Relations between Persons, Language, and History'
September 16-17, 2010, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Organizers: Suzanne Oakdale (University of New Mexico) and Magnus Course (University of Edinburgh)

This workshop brought together socio-cultural anthropologists, linguistic anthropologists, and linguists to focus on autobiographical and biographical narrative practices in lowland Peru, Ecuador, Chile, and Brazil.

MARCIA OCHOA, then a student at Stanford University, Stanford, California, received funding in August 2002 to aid research on 'Queen for a Day: Transformistas, Beauty Queens, and Mass Media in Venezuela,' supervised by Dr. Renato I. Rosaldo. 'Queen for a Day' examined the ways women in Venezuela use transnational mass media to fashion womanhood. This study, developed as an ethnography of media, embedded hegemonic productions of beauty and femininity within discourses of the nation and everyday practice.

Preliminary abstract: This project, based on fieldwork in Guatemala, tracks the growing world of Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, from the perspective of 'gang ministry.' MS-13 is one of the most violent gangs in the Americas, originating among Central American immigrants in Los Angeles, California, during the gang wars of the 1980s. Since then, United States deportation policies have transported (and, in turn, expanded) MS-13 back to Central America, with one of the strongest networks forming in postwar Guatemala.

Preliminary Abstract: I propose to investigate 'dollarization' (the adoption and use of the U.S. dollar as the official currency) and 'plurinationality' (the official recognition of multiple nations with independent rights within a single state) as state-level legal projects that draw on and potentially transform both law and government and everyday understandings of the value of 'difference' in Ecuador. What are the repertoires of value Ecuadorians use, in policy and legal debates and in everyday practice, to make sense of dollars and ethnoracial plurality?

RAM NATARAJAN, then a student at New York University, New York, New York, received funding in October 2010 to aid research on 'The Power of Memory: Transitional Justice and the Aftermath of Argentina's Dirty War,' supervised by Dr. Sally Merry. This project is a study of human rights movements, law, and military soldiers in the context of contemporary Argentine dictatorship trials, one of the most lionized, discussed, and circulated forms of judicial responses to Latin American authoritarian regimes.

ROSSIO MOTTA, then a student at University of California, Davis, California, received a grant in October 2008 to aid research on 'Psychiatric Technology Under Neo-Liberal Restructuring: The Use of Electroconvulsive Therapy and Psychotropic Drugs in Peruvian Hospitals,' supervised by Dr. Marisol de la Cadena. This research examined the use of the most common technologies for the treatment of mental disorders in Peru: electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and psychotropic drugs (PD). ECT has been used during economic crises and consequent shortages of State-provided drugs.

Prliminary abstract: This project examines the making of property, sovereignty, and legality through an ethnographic study of dispossession and restitution of land in Colombia. I will undertake this research through an ethnographic examination of Colombia's state-sponsored restitution program, which aims to restore and grant title to over six million hectares of land -- approximately five percent of the country's territory -- to people displaced and dispossessed in the country's ongoing armed conflict.