This project for dissertation research in social anthropology will study agrarian violence in a Mayan community in Chiapas, Mexico. The student will spend 18 months studying how the community's social organization is changed by changes in population, internal socio-economic differentiation, government policies, participation in external markets, and migration, and how changes in social organization affect agrarian violence. This research is important because agrarian violence in developing countries is a destabilizing factor in the world and any advances in our understanding of the causes of violence may be helpful in dealing with it.
