Robert Albro

Carnegie Council Fellow, 2004-2005

Bio

Robert Albro has worked in the Andean region since 1991, receiving support as a Fulbright Scholar and from the National Science Foundation to carry out ethnographic research on the new forms of popular politics in Bolivia after the sweeping structural reforms in 1985. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (1999), specializing in political and legal anthropology. He subsequently developed this expertise as a tenure-track assistant professor of anthropology at Wheaton College (MA), where he also coordinated the Latin American Studies program (1999–2004).

Albro has since extended his research efforts to encompass the question of popular coalition building and anti-globalization efforts in Bolivia, specifically alternative discourses and practices of citizenship, sovereignty, and democracy. With the support of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Mellon Foundation, he was a Fellow in International Studies at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress in 2003–2004, where he finished a book manuscript on the problem of stigma and popular recognition in Bolivia: A Humble Politics: Problems of Recognition in Peri-Urban Bolivia.

Featured Work

AUG 2, 2005 Article

The Future of Culture and Rights for Bolivia's Indigenous Movements

Present hostilities in Bolivia are fundamentally a war over the representation and status of the rights of the country’s majority indigenous population.