Name: Robert T. O'Brien

Mailing Address: 4641 Hazel Avenue, 2R, Philadelphia, PA 19143

Phone: 215-803-5181

Fax: N/A

E-mail: robrien@temple.edu

Website: http://www.aaaunite.blogspot.com/

Degrees: AA, Community College of Philadelphia; BA, Anthropology, Temple University 1996; PhD Candidate, Anthropology, Temple University, (highly) anticipated graduation May 2006

Major Influences on Your Professional Life (Professors, Colleagues, Students – please be specific):

I started organizing with Greenpeace in the mid-1980s. I’ve since worked on grassroots campaigns for environmental justice, access to essential medications (particularly for HIV/AIDS), access to drug treatment and harm reduction, and union representation (including a graduate employees’ union at Temple and recent work with the AAA Labor Relations Commission).

I’ve been lucky to have many professors and mentors, including Judith Goode, Ida Susser, Leith Mullings, Thomas Patterson, Susan Hyatt, Sydney White, Jane Schneider, Paul Durrenburger, Neil Smith, Vin Lyon-Callo, Brett Williams, and Karen Brodkin.

I’ve been influenced by the work of Del Jones, Cathy Lutz, Samir Amin, Stephen Gregory, Franz Fanon, Carol Stack, June Nash, Ann Kingsolver, Eric Wolf, Paul Farmer, Michael Burawoy, Shellee Colen, Sydney Mintz, Hugh Gusterson, Nikolas Rose, Robert Brenner, James Ferguson, David Harvey, Antonio Gramsci, Howard Zinn, Sonia Sanchez, Pablo Neruda, Nikki Giovanni, Sandy Morgan, Katie Cannon, Angela Davis, Micehl Foucault, Dorrine Kondo, Donna Goldstein, Bill Roseberry, Eugene Debs, Akira Kurasawa, the Shins, Ani DiFranco, Damien Rice, and Radiohead.

Folks struggling with finding places to plant their working-class roots in academia have had a major impact on my teaching and research.

Subfields of interest within Anthropology: Political economy, medical anthropology, applied/public, urban anthropology, education, ecology

Interests in the Anthropology of Work: Unemployment, subsistence strategies, labor organizing, development, community membership, environmental justice, academic labor, professionalization

Regions of specialization and Languages: North America, English and Spanish

Major Publications (for those with extensive vitas, please limit to 3 or 4 publications):

In Press            “Unemployment and Disposable Workers in Philadelphia: Just How Far Have the Bastards Gone?” Ethnos, Spring 2006 Special Issue on Un- and Underemployment.

In Press            “Whose Social Capital? How Economic Development Projects Disrupt Local Social Relations.” Judith Goode and Robert T. O’Brien in Social Capital in the City Community and Civic Life in Philadelphia. Richardson Dilworth, Editor. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Other Relevant Information (Current research, interests, goals):I’m interested in anthropology that is engaged in movements and daily practices of social justice. I’d also like to see an integrated anthropology that combines the theory and methods from “traditional” anthropology abroad (particularly on development, work, subsistence, etc.) with current theory and methods to explore sites in urban, transnational, sub/ex-urban communities in the US.