Faculty Research

Export Agribusiness, Multimodal Dispossession, and Livelihood Reconstitution in Baja California

Expanding California’s agribusiness model, the production of fresh fruits and vegetables in San Quintín, Baja California, represents a paradigmatic case of the growth of export commercial agriculture in Mexico. Through intensive use of labor, land, and water, this region contributes to the supply of fresh produce to US markets led by transnational food retailers.

Link to Dr. Zlolniski's Co-Authored Feb 2025 Article

Commodification of nature and labor precarity: the extraction of beach cobbles in Northern Mexico

This paper discusses the transformation of nature into market commodities by focusing on the extraction of beach pebbles from Mexico for export to the USA.

Link to Dr. Zlolniski's Feb 2025 Article

The inspired and the discouraged: School board service and differential effects on political ambition

Abstract: Given the national attention on Texas and its school board meetings, we ask—what are the effects of a contentious political atmosphere on desires to run for higher office? Further, how does this experience interact with individual-level traits to affect ambition? To investigate, we distributed a survey to elected school board trustees in Texas and analyzed quantitative and qualitative responses from 380 respondents...

Link to the article

Developing the Hall of Human Origins: Adaptive Resilience

This book focuses on the development of the National Museum of Natural History’s David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins over more than two decades. As one of the most visited human evolution exhibits in the world and the largest such exhibit in the United States, this exhibit has tremendous influence on public perception and knowledge of human evolution. Inclusion of content on outreach by the NMNH Human Origins Program members brings the narrative up to the present.

Link to Dr. Smith's 2025 Book

Connecting with Our Ancestors: Human Evolution Museum Experiences

This book is the culmination of a research project extending back to 2016. Part 1 provides detailed descriptions and analyses of the content in 12 museums of natural history and science. Part 2 presents interview discussions with curators and other experts involved in the creation of exhibits. The book stimulates discussion on how to improve the presentation of human evolution to the public, including a recommendation to bring content up to the present via evolutionary medicine.

Link to Dr. Smith's 2024 Book

New Article by David Arditi

Following the announcement that the Department of Justice would try to break-up Live Nation, The Conversation interviewed Dr. David Arditi, Associate Professor of Sociology. Dr. Arditi discusses the way Live Nation Entertainment eliminates competition in the live music industry.

Link to Dr. Arditi's Live Nation Article

New Article by David Arditi

In Dr. Arditi's new article, “Video Game Concerts: Unending Consumption on Video Game Platforms", he explores the way video games and music have gone from competitors to collaborators. Video games are a way for record labels to turn gamers into music fans and music is a way for video game companies to turn music fans into gamers.

Link to Dr. Arditi's 2024 article

New Publication by Heather Jacobson (with Anika König and Anindita Majumdar)

Based on in-depth interviews and non-participant observation collected with various actors in four surrogacy markets (India, the U.S., Germany, and Ukraine), in this article, Heather Jacobson and colleagues examine the impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic and the war in Ukraine on the infrastructure of the global surrogacy industry.

Link to Dr. Jacobson’s new article

New book chapter by Robert Kunovich

In “Responses to Uncertainty: Cosmopolitanism, Traditionalism, Modernism, or Fatalism?,” Robert Kunovich explores social psychological responses to living with uncertainty in the context of contemporary Poland.

Link to Dr. Kunovich’s book chapter

New book chapter by Robert Kunovich (with Danuta Życzyńska-Ciołek)

In this book chapter, “How the Past Shapes the Future: A Life Course Perspective on Poverty,” Danuta Życzyńska-Ciołek and Robert Kunovich examine changes in poverty status in Poland over six five-year periods: 1) 1988– 1993, 2) 1993– 1998, 3) 1998– 2003, 4) 2003– 2008, 5) 2008– 2013, and 6) 2013-18. We identify the social forces that lead to changes in poverty status in post-communist Poland.

Link to Dr. Kunovich’s book chapter with Dr. Życzyńska-Ciołek

New Publication by Robert Kunovich

In this new article, “Work and the public understanding of science,” Robert Kunovich explores the connection between the type of work that we do and our attitudes toward science, including science knowledge, interest in science, and trust in the scientific community.

Link to Dr. Kunovich’s article

New Textbook Chapter by Ritu Gairola Khanduri

Ritu Gairola Khanduri published a chapter in the popular anthropology textbook, Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology.

Link to Dr. Khanduri’s textbook chapter

New Piece by David Arditi

Streaming disrupted the entire entertainment industry, upending the DVD-purchasing, film-renting, moviegoing model of decades past. In this article, Dr. David Arditi explains why sharing 2% of revenue from films and shows on streaming platforms is a sticking point.

Link to new Dr. Arditi’s new piece

New Piece by David Arditi

From The Voice to House Hunters, Reality Television shows undercut the power of labor. These shows are cheap to produce, partly because they pay their works so little. Dr. Arditi shows that while hosts of The Voice make upwards of $14 million per season, contestants do not earn a dime for their work. As Hollywood writers and actors strike, it is important to remember that TV networks fill the gap with these cheap high-profit shows as a strategy to undermine labor.

Link to Dr. Arditi’s September 2023 piece

New Piece by David Arditi

Sociologist David Arditi explains how the rise of streaming upended the TV industry – and as the industry change, so did the working conditions for writers, which started to reflect many characteristics of the gig economy. While Hollywood writers might earn a lot more per hour than a DoorDash driver, they now lack the protections, wages and job security once taken for granted in pre-streaming days.

Link to Dr. Arditi's May 2023 Piece

New Book By David Arditi

In his new book, Digital Feudalism: Creators, Credit, Consumption and Capitalism, David Arditi argues we are in a new phase of capitalism, which he calls “digital feudalism.” We find precarious employment via digital platforms, we buy goods and services in perpetuity through subscriptions, and we pay for it all with debt.

Link to Dr. Arditi's Book

New Publication By Shelley Smith

Should museums show visitors more about evolution than fossil evidence and examples of natural selection? In this article, Professor of Anthropology Shelley Smith argues that they should and explains why.

Link to Dr. Smith's Article

New Blog Post by Heather Jacobson (with Virginie Rozée)

In this new post on the Reprotech Collective’s Blog, Heather Jacobson and Virginie Rozée discuss their call for the use of ethnographic and empirical data when examining surrogacy.

Link to Blog Post

New Book Publication by Ashley Lemke

In her new book, Dr. Lemke explores ancient hunting sites, stone constructions from all over the world that were used by peoples in the past to hunt wild animals. The book outlines these structures and how they work and introduces new data from such sites found underwater in the Great Lakes. The book combines history, ethnography, and archaeology to explore these structures through time and how they impacted the cultures that used them.

Link to Dr. Lemke's Book

New Publication by Heather Jacobson

In this new article, Heather Jacobson and colleague Virginie Rozée (INED, France (The French Institute for Demographic Studies)) examine assumptions about surrogacy and argue for a more nuanced approach to research on third-party pregnancy using empirical and ethnographic data.

Link to Dr. Jacobson's June 2022 article

New Publication by Heather Jacobson

Interested in the temporal limits of fertility and reproductive timing? Check out this new article by our own Heather Jacobson in which she proposes a new concept: the ART Clock.

Link to Dr. Jacobson's March 2022 article

Christian Zlolniski awarded NSF grant

The National Science Foundation awarded Christian Zlolniski, Professor of Anthropology, a $255,000 grant to study the labor and environmental implications of natural resources being marketed as sustainably sourced products.

Link to news article

New publication by Bob Young

Perceiving morality in everyday life: This research addresses the ways in which morality and immorality are perceived by individuals, not only in the actions of others, but also in the inanimate objects of encountered in everyday life.

Link to Dr. Young's article

Heather Jacobson NPR Interview

Dr. Jacobson was interviewed on the North Carolina NPR show Embodied about her surrogacy research.

Link to Dr. Jacobson's Podcast

Ashley Lemke Field School in the News

Dr. Lemke's 2021 underwater archaeology field school is featured in this episode of Shipwreck School.

Link to Dr. Lemke's Video

New Publication by Kelly Bergstrand

Recently published in Social Movement Studies "Targeted Appeals: Online Social Movement Frame Packaging and Tactics Customized for Youth" is coauthored with Monica Whitham (Associate Professor of Sociology, Oklahoma State University). It investigates how social movement organizations tailor their frames and tactics to appeal to different age groups, including young children.

Link to article

Naomi Cleghorn's work featured in Leakey Foundation Science Talk

Dr. Cleghorn's fieldwork in South Africa was the feature of this recent Leakey Foundation Lunch Break Science Talk.

Link to Dr. Cleghorn's Video

Shelley Smith interview for Sausage of Science podcast

Dr. Smith remembers C. Loring Brace on the Human Biology Association's podcast.

Link to Dr. Smith's Podcast
Dr. Kelly Bergstrand Research

Social movements, environmental sociology, and social psychology

Kelly Bergstrand Research
Dr. Naomi Cleghorn Research

Archaeology of early humans and environmental change

Naomi Cleghorn Research
Dr. Heather Jacobson Research

Sociology of reproduction and families

Heather Jacobson Research
Dr. Amy Speier Research

Anthropology of reproduction

Amy Speier Research
Dr. Christian Zlolniski Research

Applied Anthropology and globalization

Dr. Christian Zlolniski Research

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