Jim Weil

Mailing Address:

Department of Anthropology

Research and Collections Division

Science Museum of Minnesota

120 West Kellogg Blvd.

St. Paul, MN 55102

Phone: 612-722-2047 (home)            E-mail: jweil@smm.org

Degrees:

Degree            Discipline            School             Date

  PhD            Anthropology            Columbia       1980

  MPH          International Health  Hawaii            1969

  BA              Social Science          California – Berkeley            1966

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

  Growing up in Los Angeles in German-Jewish family; U.C. Berkeley courses and campus life in the '60s; study abroad Göttingen, Germany; experiences as a Peace Corps Volunteer, Thailand, as a Univ. of Hawaii graduate student and as Associate Director of the Waikiki Drug Clinic, and as a graduate student in the Columbia University anthropology department and the New York City milieu in the '70s.

Subfields of interest within Anthropology:

In addition to Anthropology of Work: Human Ecology, Political Economy; Socioeconomic Development and Underdevelopment; Museum Anthropology; Expressive Culture; Latin America: Bolivia and Costa Rica

Interests in the Anthropology of Work:

Social organization of work; peasants, ex-peasants and quasi-peasants; agriculture and agrarian labor; artisanship and material culture; employment related to tourism

Regions of specialization and Languages:

  Latin America: Bolivia, Costa Rica

  German, Spanish, and traces of Thai and Quechua

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

2004 Virtual Antiquities, Consumption Values and the Cultural Heritage Economy in a Costa Rican Communiy. In Values and Valuables: From the Sacred to the Symbolic. Ediged by Cynthia Werner and Duran Bells. Walnut Creek: Alta Mira Press.

2001 Toward a Model of Changing Roles in a Costa Rican Ceramic Artisan Industry.  Anthropology of Work Review 23(3): 27-32.

1995 Changing Sources of Livelihood from the Earth and Sea in Northwestern Costa Rica. Anthropology of Work Review 16(1-2):14-23. Special issue on Multiple Livelihoods in Contemporary Societies: Ethnographic Sketches of Individuals, Households, and Communities, Jim Weil, Editor.

1993 Verde Es la Esperanza: Colonización, Comunidad y Coca en la Amazonia. Cochabamba, Bolivia: Los Amigos del Libro. (with Connie Weil)

Other Relevant Information (Current research, interests, goals):

Ongoing research on changing livelihoods in two communities in northwestern Costa Rica under the impact of the growth of tourism: San Vicente (ceramic artisanship) and Garza (ocean resort fishing, hotels, restaurants)

Efforts to develop a comprehensive anthropology of work that integrates "traditional" anthropological research in small, non-urban communities with urban, ex-urban, industrial and post-industrial studies

Broadening forms of scholarly production by developing ethnographic meanings of material culture in museum settings; for a "virtual tour" of a Costa Rican ceramics exhibition see http://www.smm.org/research/Anthropology/ceramics.  

Theoretical interest in the current anthropological relevance of German social thought from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; particularly in combining the concepts, methods and purposes of the Naturwissenschaften and Geistesswissenschaften. 

President, SAW (2004-2007)