In my teaching and cross-cultural research and teaching, I explore environmentalism and other social movements, political culture, postsocialist societies, health and social justice, and food anthropology. I have conducted ethnographic research in Hungary, Portugal, and the United States. In my book, Wild Capitalism: Environmental Activists and Post-socialist Political Ecology in Hungary (2006), I examine how the meanings of “civil society” and “environment” have changed as environmentalists encounter the political and ecological realities of life after state socialism. In my most recent project I investigated the public health and environmental issues of Hungarian Roma (Gypsies) communities using participatory digital research methods such as PhotoVoice.
Articles
Environmental Justice and Roma Communities in Central and Eastern Europe (with Tamara Steger and Richard Filcak), Environmental Policy and Governance (2009)
Environmental injustice and the social exclusion of Roma communities in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)...
'Wild Capitalism’ and ‘Ecocolonialism’: A Tale of Two Rivers, American Anthropologist (2005)
The development and pollution of two rivers, the Danube and Tisza, have been the site...
The Genius of the Nation versus the Gene-Tech of the Nation: Science, Identity, and GMO Debates in Hungary, Science as Culture (2004)
Introduction In the late 1990s, Hungarian politicians, environmentalists, and agricultural lobbyists weighed the pros and...
Green Carnivores, Mad Cows and Gene Tech: The Politics of Food in Hungarian Environmentalism, Anthropology of Eastern Europe Review (2003)
Anthropologists and sociologists, from Levi-Strauss to Bourdieu, have observed that consuming food is a profoundly...
Chernobyl Stories and Anthropological Shock in Hungary, Anthropological Quarterly (2001)
The Budapest Chernobyl Day commemoration generated a creative outpouring of stories about parental responsibilities, scientific...
Books
Wild Capitalism: Environmental Activism and Postsocialist Political Ecology in Hungary (2006)
"Wild Capitalism" examines environmental issues in the "New Europe" of the twenty-first century. Specifically, it...
Unpublished Papers
International Environmental Justice: Building the Natural Assets of the World’s Poor (with S. Ravi Rajan), Political Economy Research Institute Working Paper #87 (2004)
In recent years, vibrant social movements have emerged across the world to fight for environmental...
Presentations
Lives, Images, Audiences, Intentions: Participatory Visual Anthropology in a Hungarian Romani Neighborhood, America Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) (2009)
Participatory visual methodologies open up new possibilities for community collaboration in the research process, appeal...
From Democratization to Globalization to Justice : Political Generations in Hungarian Environmentalism from the 1980s to the 2000s , György Ránki Symposium on Hungarian Studies (2009)
This presentation applies sociologist Nancy Whittier's concept of "political generations" to explore political identities and...
Photo exhibitions
Across the Bridge: Using PhotoVoice to Study Environment and Health in a Romani Community. (with The Sajó River Association for Environment and Community Development, Hungary), (PhotoVoice exhibition catalogue) (2009)
This photo essay is the product of a partnership between Prof. Krista Harper, the Sajó...
Snap Peas: A Photovoice Participatory Evaluation of a School Gardening Program through the Eyes of Fifth Graders (with Catherine Sands, Lee Ellen Reed, and Maggie Shar) (2009)
In the springtime, fifth grade students at the Williamsburg Elementary School in rural Western Massachusetts...