Anthropology

I am an evolutionary ecologist who studies humans, which puts me most of the time in the world of anthropology, though i happily cross disciplinary borders in the study of human behavior.  I work primarily from the lens of cultural evolution theory, which considers the social transmission of behavior and resulting dynamics of culture. Social transmission, as a system of pattern replication, is an evolutionary system with formal similarities to yet important structural differences from genetic evolution. I am particularly interested in prosocial behavior (cooperation, coordination, and altruism) and in environmentally related behaviors and beliefs. A main focus of my study is the understanding the cultural dynamics of physical practice and ritual. I am particularly interested in how ritual practices have shaped the scale and form of human society, through their varied effects on prosociality. I use a multi-method approach, integrating mathematical models of cultural evolution, formal behavioral experiments exploring psychological predispositions, and qualitative, experiential participant observation-based field research.

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I am also a visual/sensory anthropologist.  I use video, photography, and audio recording of culture and human behavior as both a compliment and counterpoint to verbal and quantitative behavioral and cultural analysis.  Visual and audio documentation allows us to richly share information from a culture, capturing details and synergies hard to convey in words or numbers.  In some cases, this allows for contextual information which helps us make sense of these other forms of analysis.  In others, it challenges these ways of analyzing culture through a more experiential exposure to other.

My own field work is in northern British Columbia, where I work in traditional First Nations territories with both indigenous and non-indigenous communities at the intersections of First Nations sovereignty, environmental activism, indigenous governance and traditions, and changing socio-environmental relations.  I engage in participant observation research, documentary film-making, and photography.

Finally, as a theater artist, I am interested in intersections of art and science and in the practice of theater anthropology. Experimental theater has much philosophically in common with the empirical approach of science, but with a different historical body and culture of knowledge and methods.  While I have an interest in how theater can be used as a tool for conveying the findings of science, I am as much interested in using theater as a place for rich somatic/psychological experimentation and as an interactive framework for community-based research. Theater Anthropology (ala Eugenio Barba) takes the starting premise that the intercultural study of theater necessitates a deep experience in the practice-based research of theater and thus is best performed via collaborative cross-cultural exchange and mutual study amongst theater artists, rather than by academic outsiders unable to access the somatic depths of these traditions themselves. To this end, I have an interest in intercultural exchange amongst ritual/theater practitioners, looking for common cores and differences amongst theater practitioners in different cultures.

Current Projects

  • Documenting Cultures: work for the Max Planck Institute, Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, visually documenting life in communities associated with the department’s long term field sites. 
  • Echo Chambers and Social Media: agent based modeling of social media consumption of political content, using alternate proposed psychological biases and reactions 
  • Raven Always Sets Things Right… a film about a Haida Potlatch confronting extractivist industry corruption and Divide and Conquer Politics

Links