Contact
Email:
carran02@luther.edu
Anita Carrasco is an environmental anthropologist and associate professor of anthropology at Luther College, USA. She received her PhD in cultural anthropology with a concentration in applied anthropology from the University of Arizona in 2011. Anita is a member of the American Anthropological Association and the Latin American Studies Association. Her research interests include extractive industries, corporate social responsibility, environmental impacts, mining company-indigenous community relations, and political ecology.
Her research for over a decade has focused on community relations with the mining industry and the significance of indigenous and industrial water rights in this relationship in the Atacama Desert of Chile. More recently she has been exploring Atacameño indigenous peoples and their recognition of nature’s influence on human existence, and the role of culture in the balance of nature and social relations that transcend an artificial human-nature divide.
RCC Research Project: The Embrace of the Serpent: A Chronicle of Atacameño Life in the Face of Mining
Selected Publications:
- “A Biography of Water in Atacama, Chile: Two Indigenous Communities’ Responses to the Extractive Encroachments of Mining.” Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 21, no. 1 (2016): 130–50.
- “Jobs and Kindness: William E. Rudolph’s Role in the Shaping of Perceptions of Mining-Community Relations in the Atacama, Chile.” The Extractive Industry & Society, no. 2 (2015): 352–59.
- “Entre dos aguas: identidad moral en la relación entre corporaciones mineras y comunidades indígenas en el desierto de Atacama.” Chungara 46, no. 2 (2014): 247–58.
- “A Sacred Mountain and the Art of ‘Impression Management’: Analyzing a Mining Company’s Encounter with Indigenous Communities in Atacama, Chile.” Mountain Research and Development 30, no. 4 (2010): 391–97.