DEPARTMENT INFORMATION
UPCOMING EVENTS
ACADEMIC INFORMATION
HONOR SOCIETIES
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
William P Mitchell
Professor of Anthropology and Freed Professor in the Social Sciences
Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh, 1972
Office: Wilson Annex O-11
E-mail: mitchell@monmouth.edu
Telephone: 732-263-5644
Professor Mitchell has researched and published widely on many aspects of South American culture and history, including the region's political economy, issues of peace and war, ecological systems, sociocultural evolution, displaced people, migration, social and religious change, and historical religious pictographs. His most recent book is Voices from the Global Margin: Confronting Poverty and Inventing New Lives in the Andes (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), which won the 2007 Lasa Peru Flora Tristan Award of the Latin American Studies Association for the best book on Peru in any language or discpline.
Professor Mitchell teaches courses on Cultural Anthropology, Civilizations of the Andes, and World/Global History. During his career at Monmouth, Professor Mitchell has been selected Distinguished Teacher, was founding head of the Honors Program, has served as Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and is currently Interim Dean of the Honors School. He is a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences. He recently stepped down as a member of the Labor Relations Commission of the American Anthropological Association and as co-chair of the Anthropology Section of the New York Academy of Sciences.
Current Projects:
In preparation: Professor Mitchell is currently preparing a paper titled “Anthropological Hope and Social Reality: Cornell’s Vicos Project Re-examined” to be published by the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos.
He is involved in several sessions at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in December 2009, including a session "Celebrating the life of Rhoda Halperin" that he organized in conjunction with the Society for Economic Anthropology and the New York Academy of Sciences. His obituary of Rhoda Halperin will appear in the March 2010 issue of American Anthropologist.
He is serving as Interim Dean of the Honors School at Monmouth University for the 2009-2010 academic year.
Publications:
Books:
Voices from the Global Margin: Confronting Poverty and Inventing New Lives in the Andes. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006.
This book won the LASA PERU Flora Tristan Award of the Latin American Studies Association for the best book published on Peru in between meetings of the Association (March 2006 to September 2007). Read More ...
Reviewer Miguel la Serna calls this book "inspirational" and "engaging" as well as a "creative and thoughtful" account, adding that Mitchell "offers a unique human element to his analysis that has rarely been matched in Andean studies....". Latin American and Caribbean Studies, vol. 3[2], pp. 205-214.
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Irrigation at High Altitudes: The Social Organization of Water Control Systems in the Andes, ed. (with David Guillet). Vol. 12 Society For Latin American Anthropology Publication Series. Washington: American Anthropological Association, 1994.
Peasants on the Edge: Crop, Cult, and Crisis in the Andes. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991.
Facsimile Edition:
Picturing Faith: A Facsimile Edition of the Pictographic Catechism in the Huntington Free Library. New York: Huntington Free Library, Distributed by the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1999. (With Barbara H. Jaye: Introductory essay, facsimile reproduction, and translation of a pictographic catechism for Quechua Speakers in the collection of the Huntington Free Library.
Journal and Book Articles:
“Pictographic Catechisms.” in Guide to Documentary Sources for Andean Studies 1530-1900. Pp. 265-271. Joanne Pillsbury, ed. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008. This book was chosen as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2008.
“Detour Onto The Shining Path: Obscuring the Social Revolution in the Andes.” in Deadly Developments: Capitalism, States and War. Pp. 235-278. Steven P. Reyna and R. E. Downs, eds. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Publishers, 1999.
“Pressures on Peasant Production and the Transformation of Regional and National Identities.” in Migrants, Regional Identities, and Latin American Cities, Teofilo Altamirano and Lane Hirabayashi, eds. Washington: American Anthropological Association, Publication Series of the Society for Latin American Anthropology, 13 (1997): 25-48.
“Pictographs in the Andes: The Huntington Free Library Quechua Catechism.” Latin American Indian Literatures Journal 12(1) (1996):1-42 (with Barbara H. Jaye).
“The Transformation of Cultural Anthropology: The Decline of Ecology and Structure and the Rise of Political Economy and the Cultural Construction of Social Reality.” Ecologie Humaine 12(2) (1994): 41-64.
“Introduction to High Altitude Irrigation.” Introduction to Irrigation at High Altitudes: The Social Organization of Water Control Systems in the Andes, William P. Mitchell and David Guillet,eds. Pp. 1-20. Vol. 12 Society For Latin American Anthropology Publication Series. Washington: American Anthropological Association, 1994.
“Dam the Water: The Ecology and Political Economy of Irrigation in the Ayacucho Valley, Peru.” in Irrigation at High Altitudes: The Social Organization of Water Control Systems in the Andes, William P. Mitchell and David Guillet, eds. Pp. 275-302. Vol. 12 Society For Latin American Anthropology Publication Series. Washington: American Anthropological Association, 1994.
"Some are More Equal than Others: Labor Supply, Reciprocity, and Redistribution in the Andes." Research in Economic Anthropology 13 (1991): 191-219.
"The Only Game in Town: The Latin American Fiesta System and the York Feast of Corpus Christi." Fifteenth Century Studies 13 (1988): 485-503. (With Barbara Jaye).
"The Myth of the Isolated Native Community: A Case Study from Peru." Global Interdependence in the Curriculum: Case Studies for the Social Sciences. Judy Himes, ed. Pp. 35-49. Princeton: Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, 1987.
"On Terracing the Andes." Current Anthropology 26 (1985): 288-289.
"Symbols and Structuralism in the Andes: A Case of Theory Obscuring the Facts." Reviews in Anthropology 9 (1982): 87-96.
"Local Ecology and the State: Implications of Contemporary Quechua Land Use for the Inca Sequence of Agricultural Work." In Beyond the Myths of Culture: Essays in Cultural Materialism, Eric B. Ross, ed. Pp. 139-154. New York: Academic Press, 1980.
"Inconsistencia de Status y Dimensiones de Rangos en los Andes Centrales del Peru." Estudios Andinos 15 (1979): 21-31.
"Social Adaptation to the Mountain Environment of an Andean Village." In Hill Lands: Proceedings of an International Symposium. Held at West Virginia University on October 3-9, 1976. John Luchok, John D. Cawthon, and Michael J. Breslin, eds. Pp. 187-198. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 1978.
"Irrigation and Community in the Central Peruvian Highlands." American Anthropologist 78 (1976): 25-44.
"Runakunap Rawsayninkupaq Rurasankunaqa. La Technologia en el Mundo Andino, Tomo 1," Heather Lechtman & Ana Soldi, eds. Mexico: Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas de la Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. (A revised version of "Irrigation and Community in the Central Peruvian highlands," American Anthropologist 78:25-44.)
"The Hydraulic Hypothesis: A Reappraisal." Current Anthropology 14 (1973): 532-534.
Reviews and Letters:
"Review of: Precolumbian Water Management: Ideology, Ritual and Power.” Lisa J. Lucero and Barbara W. Fash, eds. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2006. In: Journal of Anthropological Research 64 (2008): pp 158-159.
"Review of: Millennial Ecuador: Critical Essays on Cultural Transformations and Cultural Dynamics.” Norman E. Whitten Jr., ed. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2003. In: Tipití 5(1)(2007): pp 99-101.
"Review of: The Articulated Peasant: Household Economies in the Andes." Human Ecology 34(2), (April 2006): 301-303.
"The US War Machine." Anthropology Newsletter, American Anthropological Association 32 (April 1991): 4.
