Margaret Willson
PhD, London School of Economics, 1990, Anthropology
Research interests
Concepts and practices of international aid and development, constructions of inequality, sex and gender, race and ethnicity, ethnographic film, Brazil, Chinese Diaspora, Papua New Guinea, Iceland
Current Positions
International Director, Bahia Street
Affiliated Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington
I am currently International Director of Bahia Street, an NGO which is working for social change by providing quality education for economically impoverished girls in Bahia, Brazil and which is also establishing creative and effective models for international infrastructures for international development.
In a partnership between Bahia Street and the University of Washington’s Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity, I am leading the “Society, Equality, and Change” study abroad program in Fall 2009. The course, now in its second year, takes place in Seattle and Salvador and explores issues of identity, culture, inequality, and social change.
I regularly blog about my work with Bahia Street. I will add material to this page as time goes on.
Selected Recent Awards
2008 Jefferson Award
2007 Thomas C. Wales Award for Passionate Citizenship
Selected Publications
2009. “Incorporating an Anthropological Consciousness as a Model for Development, “ in M. Bronson and T. Fields (Eds.). So What? Now What?: The Anthropology of Consciousness Responds to a World in Crisis, Cambridge Scholars Publishing: New Castle upon Tyne
2007. November, Dance Lest We All Fall Down: A Journey of Friendship, Poverty, Power and Peace. Cold Tree Press: Nashville (Silver Medal Award for Multi-cultural Literature, Independent Book Awards 2008)
2005. “Indulgence,” in D. Kulick and A. Meneley (eds.) Fat: An Anthropology of an Obsession, Tarcher/Penguin: New York
2002. “Race, Inequality and Gender in the Work of an NGO in Bahia, Brazil,” in Practicing Anthropology, Vol. 23, No.2
2001. “Designs of Deception: Concepts of Consciousness, Spirituality, and Survival in Capoeira Angola in Salvador, Bahia.” in Anthropology of Consciousness. Vol. 12, No.1
1997. “Playing the Dance, Dancing the Game: Race, Sex and Stereotype in Anthropological Fieldwork” in Ethnos, Vol. 3-4 August
1995. Taboo: Identity, Sexuality and Erotic Subjectivity in Anthropological Fieldwork (Edited volume with D. Kulick) Routledge: London
1995. “Different Drummer: Vision and the Anthropological Text” in Anthropology and Humanism, December
1994. “Rambo’s Wife Saves the Day: Subjugating the Gaze and Subverting the Narrative in a New Guinea Swamp,” (with D. Kulick). in Visual Anthropology Review, Vol. 10, No. 2 Spring (reprinted in Kelly Askew and Richard Wilk (eds.), The Anthropology of Media: A Reader, Blackwell: Oxford 2002)
1992. “Echoing Images: Constructions of Savagery in a Papua New Guinea Village,” (with D. Kulick), in Visual Anthropology, Vol. 5, No. 2 Fall
Mountain, Center for East Asian Studies, Western Washington University: Bellingham, WA, pp. 81-93.
