I’m currently working on three projects that analyze how human agency relates to social structures, development trajectories, and the environment.
In a paper on clientelism and contentious politics, I show that clients lead collective action but produce conflict and social fragmentation that maintain social hierarchy and sources of further patronage—in what I call ‘contentious client cycles’ of social change without transformation.
My dissertation investigates land policy implementation in Brazil and India using comparative-historical and mixed methods to analyze why weak state bureaucracies succeed or fail at efforts to establish clear land property rights (land titles).
Third, based on a decade-long ethnographic engagement in the Amazon region, I explore the social and political basis of deforestation and alternative climate futures.
