Research Interests for Orin Starn

I am interested in the themes of culture, history, and power, and specialize in Latin America, Native North America, and, more recently, sports and society. My latest book "Ishi's Brain: In Search of America's Last 'Wild' Indian"(W.W. Norton and Company, 2004) chronicles the story of this last survivor of California's Yahi tribe. A San Francisco Chronicle Best Books of 2004, "Ishi's Brain" explores questions about violence and conquest, the history of the West, and the relation between anthropology and indigenous peoples. Earlier, I did much of my work in the Andes of South America, mostly in Peru. I am currently co-editing a forthcoming collection of articles by prominent scholars about the new visibility of indigenous identity and politics worldwide (Indigenous Experience Today, forthcoming, Berg Press). An earlier book "Nightwatch: The Politics of Protest in the Andes" (Duke University Press, 1999) recounts the history of a powerful rural movement that emerged in in the 1980s. Here I took up issues related to political violence and national identity, social movements and modernity, and gender and power as they have played out in the Andes. I'm also the co-editor of "The Peru Reader: History, Culture, and Politics," which has recently come out in a second edition from Duke University Press. My publications also include three books in Spanish, and a co-edited anthology about cultural politics and social protest, "Between Resistance and Revolution: Cultural Politics and Social Protest" (Rutgers University Press, 1997). I am now doing research for a book on golf and American society (and do a "Golf Politics" blog at: www.golfpolitics.blogspot.com). My writing about the history and politics of the sport has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Detroit Free Press, and South Atlantic Quarterly as well as being cited in the New York Times, USA Today, and other newspapers. My general theoretical interests include violence and memory; nationalism and ethnic identity;the history of anthropology; the anthropology of sports; activist and public anthropology; and cultural studies and postocolonial theory.

Keywords:

Cultural theory, Indigenous politics and identity, Politics of representation and nationalism, transnationalism and globalization, history of anthropology, activist anthropology, the Andes, sports and society, Latin America, Native North America

Areas of Interest:

Cultural theory
Indigenous politics and identity
Politics of representation and nationalism
transnationalism and globalization
history of anthropology
activist anthropology
Andes and Latin America
Native North America
sports and society

Recent Publications

1. O. Starn, Caddying for the Dalai Lama: Golf, Heritage Tourism and the Pinehurst Resort, South Atlantic Quarterly (Spring, 2006) [pdf]
2. O. Starn and M. de la Cadena, Indigenous Experience Today (2007), Berg
3. O. Starn et al., The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Revised and Expanded Editon) (2005), Duke University Press
4. O. Starn, Ishi's Brain: In Search of America's Last "Wild" Indian (2004), W.W. Norton (Paperback release in June 2005.)
5. O. Starn, Ishi's Spanish Words, in Ishi in Three Centuries, edited by Karl Kroeber and Clifton Kroeber (2003), University of Nebraska Press [102-6227751-9138527]