Actor Details

Biography / Academic Interests :
Leigh Binford came to the College of Staten Island from Mexico’s Autonomous University of Puebla where he worked following twelve years at the University of Connecticut. He has carried out fieldwork in highland and lowland Mexico and highland El Salvador, focusing on rural social economies, peasantries, international migration, human rights, civil war and post-war reconstruction. His current project (2010-2012), titled “From Wartime to Peacetime: Post-insurgent Individuality in northern Morazan, El Salvador,” addresses the consequences of almost two decades of post-civil war neoliberal policies for former rebels of the Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation and their supporters. The work is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Scholarships / Publications :
Books:
Landscapes of Struggle: Politics, Community, and the Nation-State in Twentieth Century El Salvador. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press (2004) (co-edited with Aldo Lauria-Santiago).

The El Mozote Massacre: Anthropology and Human Rights. Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press (1996).

Zapotec Struggles: Histories, Politics and Representations from Juchitán, Oaxaca. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press (1993) (edited with Howard Campbell, Miguel Bartolomé and Alicia Barabas).

Obliging Need: Rural Petty Industry in Modern Mexican Capitalism. Austin: University of Texas Press (with Scott Cook, 1990).

Recent Articles:
“A Perfect Storm of Neglect and Failure: Capitalist Restoration in Northern Morazán, El Salvador”, Journal of Peasant Studies 37 (3) (2010).

“Lynching and States of Fear in Urban Mexico”, Anthropologica 51 (2): 1-12 (co-authored with Nancy Churchill) (2009).

“From Fields of Power to Fields of Sweat: The Dual Process of Constructing Mexican Agricultural Contract Workers in Canada and Mexico”, Third World Quarterly 30 (3): 503-17 (2009).