The disciplinary effects of anthropology have over the years gradually framed and reframed my current research interests.  They have done so as the hard-won legitimacies to speak and to write about the cultural forces contributing to the presence of human socialities in the Antilles and Amazonia.

During my time as a student at the London School of Economics and Political Science, their anthropology favored Structural-Marxism when it seemed the most likely theoretical paradigm to succeed.  Today, however, perhaps with greater vigor, I animadvert more about the differences between observing, interpreting, and describing the lived experiences of individuals in their various social worlds.

If I were to admit to any formal category from which I now teach and research, I think it would have to be that commonly referred to as “Philosophical Anthropology.”  My theoretical concerns have indeed been depicted as stemming from a subaltern consciousness, yet I intend neither to interrogate the scientific specificity of the anthropological project nor to place judgment upon its Euro-American emphasis.  Rather, I would like to site the interpretative limits of the project and, from there, embrace -- rather than evade -- the anthropological difficulties compromising humanistic descriptions of the fabulously different ways people live their lives.