Michael Cepek
Professor, Anthropology
Contact
- MH 2.02.24
- michael.cepek@utsa.edu
Bio
My work explores the relationship between cultural difference, political power, and environmental change in the Andean foothills and Amazonian forests of Ecuador’s Indigenous Cofán Nation. My overarching goal is to bridge the gaps between nuanced ethnography, theoretical innovation, public scholarship, and direct contributions to Cofán welfare. I am President of the Cofán Survival Fund (www.cofan.org), a U.S.-based nonprofit that supports the territorial, medical, and educational initiatives of the Fundación Sobrevivencia Cofán, our Cofán-directed Ecuadorian counterpart.
As a teacher and scholar-advocate, I engage debates in environmental, economic, and political anthropology, religious studies, conservation policy and practice, and collaborative research and filmmaking with Indigenous Peoples and other marginalized groups. All my projects have academic, applied, and advocacy dimensions, and they are based on a 30-year partnership with the Cofán Nation. My first book was a study of Cofán environmental politics, my second was an ethnography of Cofán encounters with the oil industry, and my third—now in process and co-authored with my Cofán mentor Cesario Lucitante—is an investigation of the relationship between shamanism and dispossession in Cofán territory.
My teaching interests grow out of my long-term anthropological experience as informed by both classical and contemporary theory. I firmly believe that cultural analysis and ethnographic methods are essential tools for understanding humanity in the 21st century. I teach courses organized by topic (Indigenous peoples and politics; environment, culture, and conservation; the oil industry; shamanism and cosmology), approach (environmental, political, and economic anthropology; political economy; theories of value; the history of social and cultural theory), and area (lowland South America; Andean South America; contemporary Latin America). I also enjoy teaching introductory anthropology, and I consider myself to be an enthusiastic spokesperson for the discipline.
Prospective students: I am currently accepting MA and doctoral students. I am especially interested in applicants whose proposed projects focuses on one or more of the following areas: collaborative, community-engaged research; Latin America; oil and other extractive industries; Indigenous peoples and politics; environmental conservation programs; contamination and pollution; shamanism and cosmology; NGO’s; and the theoretical and methodological approaches associated with phenomenology, political economy, and holistic ethnography. I value both academic and applied anthropology, and I am interested in advising students open to either or both paths.
Research Interests
- Amazonia
- Shamanism
- Extractive industries
- Indigenous Peoples and politics
- Environmental conservation
- Advocacy and community-engaged research
Degrees
- Ph.D. in Anthropology, University of Chicago (2006)
- M.A. in Anthropology, University of Chicago (1999)
- B.A. in Anthropology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1996)
Honors and Awards
2023 – 2024: Guggenheim Fellow, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
2023: President’s Distinguished Achievement Award for Advancing Globalization (Increasing UTSA’s International Profile and Programs), University of Texas at San Antonio
2019 – 2022: Fulbright Core U.S. Scholars Program Grant
2019 – 2022: Post-Ph.D. Research Grant, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research
2021: President’s Distinguished Achievement Award for Community Engagement, University of Texas at San Antonio
2021: President’s Distinguished Achievement Award for Core Curriculum Teaching, University of Texas at San Antonio
2019: Finalist for the National PROSE Award (for Life in Oil: Cofán Survival in the Petroleum Fields of Amazonia), Association of American Publishers
2017: Engaged Anthropology Grant, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research
2007 – 2017: Action Fellow in the program for Science Action for Community & Conservation, Field Museum of Natural History
2016: President’s Distinguished Achievement Award for Teaching Excellence, University of Texas at San Antonio
2015 – 2016: American Council of Learned Societies Fellow
2012 – 2014: Post-Ph.D. Research Grant, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research
2007: Sol Tax Dissertation Prize, University of Chicago (for the dissertation that best“ combines highest intellectual merit with relevance to anthropology and action”)
2006 – 2007: Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Macalester College
2004 – 2005: Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, Institute for Citizens & Scholars 2003. Mark Hannah Watkins Post-Field Fellowship, University of Chicago
1997 – 2003. Century Fellowship, University of Chicago
1997 – 2000. Graduate Research Fellowship, National Science Foundation
2000 – 2001: Fulbright-International Institute for Education Grant
2000: Fulbright-Hays Grant for Doctoral Dissertation Abroad (declined)
Publications
In progress: (Michael Cepek and Cesario Lucitante) Violent Healing: Shamanism, Dispossession, and Death in Amazonia.
In press: Southern Epistemologies: Knowledge, Wisdom and Understanding in the Andes and Western Amazon. Edited by Clark Barrett, Michael Cepek, Pablo Quintanilla, Emanuele Fabiano, and Edouard Machery. Chicago: Hau Books/University of Chicago Press.
In press: (Michael Cepek and Cesario Lucitante) “Perceptions, Relations, and Possessions: The Expansive Body as the Foundation of Cofán Shamanic Epistemology.” To appear in Southern Epistemologies: Knowledge, Wisdom and Understanding in the Andes and Western Amazon. Edited by Clark Barrett, Michael Cepek, Pablo Quintanilla, Emanuele Fabiano, and Edouard Machery. Chicago: HAU Books/University of Chicago Press.
2023: (Paige West, Dan Brockington, et al.) “Governance and Conservation Effectiveness in Protected Areas and Indigenous and Locally Managed Areas.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 48:559–588.
2023: “Ecuador, Shamanism, History and Violence, 2019.” In Naked Fieldnotes: A Rough Guide to Ethnographic Writing. Edited by Matthew Wolf-Meyer and Danielle Elliot. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
2023: Epistemologías Andinas y Amazónicas: Conceptos Indígenas de Conocimiento, Sabiduría, y Comprensión. Edited by Pablo Quintanilla, Clark Barrett, Michael Cepek, Emanuele Fabiano, and Edouard Machery. Lima: La Prensa de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.
2023: “Allí Podría Haber Sangre: Petróleo, Humilidad, y la Cosmopolítica de un Petro-Ser Cofán.” To appear in Epistemologías Andinas y Amazónicas: Conceptos Indígenas de Concimiento, Sabiduría, y Comprensión. Edited by Clark Barrett, Pablo Quintanilla, Michael Cepek, Emanuele Fabiano, and Edouard Machery. Pp. 105–132. Lima: La Prensa de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.
2020: “Engaging, Standing, and Stepping: Evaluating Anthropological Activism on an Amazonian Petro-Frontier.” Commoning Ethnography 3(1): 5-24.
2019: “Valueless Value: The Question of Production in Cofán Shamanism.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 9(2):320-333.
2019: La Supervivencia del Pueblo Cofán en los Campos Petroleros de la Amazonía Ecuatoriana. Translated by Mary Ellen Fieweger. Quito, Ecuador: Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales.
2018: Life in Oil: Cofán Survival in the Petroleum Fields of Amazonia. Austin: University of Texas Press.
2016: “There Might Be Blood: Oil, Humility, and the Cosmopolitics of a Cofán Petro-Being.” American Ethnologist 43(4):623-635. 2015: “Ungrateful Predators: Capture and the Creation of Cofán Violence.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 21:542-560.
2014: “A White Face for the Cofán Nation?: Randy Borman and the Ambivalence of Indigeneity.” In Performing Indigeneity: Historic and Contemporary Displays of Indigeneity in Public Spaces. Edited by Laura Graham and Glenn Penny. Pp. 83-109. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
2013: “Indigenous Difference: Rethinking Particularity in the Anthropology of Amazonia.” Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 18(2):359-370. 2012: A Future for Amazonia: Randy Borman and Cofán Environmental Politics. Austin: University of Texas Press.
2012: “The Loss of Oil: Constituting Disaster in Amazonian Ecuador.” Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 17(3):393-412.
2012: “Strange Powers: Conservation, Science, and Transparency in an Indigenous Political Project.” Anthropology Today 28(4):14-17.
2011: “Foucault in the Forest: Questioning Environmentality in Amazonia.” American Ethnologist 38(3):501-515.
2009: “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: “Essential Commitments: Identity and the Politics of Cofán Conservation.” Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 13(1):196-222.
2008: “Bold Jaguars and Unsuspecting Monkeys: The Value of Fearlessness in Cofán Politics.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14:331-349.
1999: “Nature, Value, and Rent: Fernando Coronil’s The Magical State.” The Chicago Anthropology Exchange 29:51-66.
