Michael L. Cepek
Assistant Professor
Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2006
Research
Assistant Professor
Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2006
Research
I am an anthropologist with a broad background in social and cultural theory and the people, politics, and ecology of greater Amazonia. At the most general level, I am interested in the question of how people actively work to transform the conditions of their lives. In terms of specific research focus, I explore the relation between socio-ecological crisis, cultural difference, and directed change at the margins of global orders. In my work with indigenous Cofán people in eastern Ecuador, I investigate processes of political mobilization and cultural creativity. I pay special attention to the environment-mediated relations that join Cofán actors to constellations of scientific knowledge, activist networking, and corporate power. In two emerging projects, I build upon my Cofán-centered research to explore the politics of petroleum production and scientific conservation in the Andean countries of South America. In all of my work, I base an immersed ethnographic perspective on theories of practice, value, and identity. I use this viewpoint to engage broader concerns in environmental anthropology, political economy, science and technology studies, and collaborative activism with indigenous peoples and other subaltern groups.
In addition, I am the Secretary/Treasurer of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America (SALSA), and I am responsible for distributing the society’s journal, Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America.
Teaching
My teaching interests grow out of my long-term ethnographic experience as informed by both classical and contemporary theory. I firmly believe that cultural analysis and ethnographic methods are essential tools for the study of human action, from the micro-level of real-time activity to the macro-level of transnational process. I teach courses organized by topic (global indigenous politics; oil and natural resource politics; social movements and political action; environment and conservation; shamanism and cosmology), theoretical approach (value; practice, activity, and experience; science and technology studies; political economy), and area (Amazonia; Andean South America; contemporary Latin America). In addition, I consider myself to be an enthusiastic spokesperson for the discipline, and I enjoy teaching introductory courses in four-field and cultural anthropology.
Representative Publications
2009 - Cepek, Michael L. "The Myth of the Gringo Chief: Amazonian Messiahs and the Power of Immediacy." Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 16(2):227-248.
2008 - Cepek, Michael L. "Bold Jaguars and Unsuspecting Monkeys: The Value of Fearlessness in Cofán Politics." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14:331-349.
2008 - Cepek, Michael L. "Essential Commitments: Identity and the Politics of Cofán Conservation." Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 13(1):1-27.
