Preliminary abstract: Agricultural practices in southwestern Colombia have been site of contention since the 1980s when illicit coca production soared and provoked state and foreign policy responses aimed at its eradication. Though USAID export-oriented strategies to substitute coca prove attractive to many rural families, a growing network of farmers and scientists have begun to counter these official 'solutions' in the pursuit of alternative agricultural-based life projects for the region.

KRISTINA LYONS, then a student at University of California, Davis, California, received funding in May 2007 to aid research on 'Science, Storytelling, and the Politics of Collaboration: Advocacy against Aerial Fumigation in Colombia,' supervised by Dr Marisol de la Cadena. This research project takes seriously the proposal to think with and from the ethnographically inspired associations emerging out of 'the politics of soil' in Colombia.

Preliminary abstract: The original study used a plant--human, co-evolutionary health model to compare and evaluate the relationship between food systems and health across two Ecuadorian Amazon indigenous groups, the last true Waorani hunter-gatherer group in Ecuador, and the other a remote neighboring Kichwa indigenous community practicing subsistence agriculture. There were major differences in health outcomes across the board; most of the infectious and chronic diseases present in neighboring indigenous farmers were completely absent among the Waorani hunter-gatherers.

DR. CARLOS D. LONDONO-SULKIN, University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, was awarded a Richard Carley Hunt Fellowship in January 2005 to fund the production of a monograph describing the ongoing achievement of social life of Muinane and other People of the Center (Colombian Amazon), and how this life was shaped by their morally evaluative understandings of themselves and of their interactions.

MARY THERESA FRANCES LEIGHTON, then a student at the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, received funding in October 2008, to aid research on 'Making Authoritative Knowledge in the Field: The Epistemic Culture of South American Archaeological Research Projects,' supervised by Dr. Shannon L. Dawdy. This dissertation project explores the nature of expert knowledge within field sciences, aiming to understand how such knowledge is constructed, circulated, and delineated in field sciences in contrast to laboratory sciences.

Publication Credits:

Leinaweaver, Jessaca B. 2009. Raising the Roof in the Transnational Andes: Building Houses, Forging Kinship.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15(4):777-796.

Leinaweaver, Jessaca B. 2008. Improving Oneself: Young People Getting Ahead in the Peruvian Andes. Latin American Perspectives 35(4):60-78

Leinaweaver, Jessaca B. 2010. Outsourcing Care: How Peruvian Migrants Meet Transnational Family Obligations. Latin American Perspectives 37(5):67-87.

JESSACA LEINAWEAVER, while a student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, received funding in July 2001 to aid research on rural and urban conceptions of fosterage in Ayacucho, Peru, under the supervision of Dr. Bruce Mannheim. Leinaweaver conducted four months of fieldwork on the ways in which recent migrants to urban Ayacucho experienced family and a sense of belonging, focusing specifically on how children were incorporated into families they had not been born into.