Anthony Harrington Distinguished Professor in Latin American Studies
Professor Emeritus
Sociocultural Anthropologist
fbabb@unc.edu
319-400-1468
Website
CV
Research Interests
Cultural/economic/feminist anthropology, Gender, Race, and Sexuality; Critical Development Studies, Urbanization in the Global South, Tourism Studies, Latin American Studies, Central Andes, Central America
Specializations
Sociocultural Anthropology, Feminist Anthropology, Latin American Anthropology, Decolonizing MethodologiesResearch Background
Dr. Florence E. Babb is the Anthony Harrington Distinguished Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Anthropology Emerita at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before coming to Carolina in fall 2014, she taught at Colgate University, the University of Iowa, and the University of Florida. Her areas of specialization in Anthropology and Latin American Studies include gender, race, and sexuality; cultural politics; feminist ethnography; travel and tourism. She is active in the American Anthropological Association (AAA) as incoming Secretary on the Executive Board (2024-2027) and in the Latin American Studies Association (LASA). As a cultural anthropologist, Babb has long been interested in the intertwined inequalities of gender, race, class, and sexuality in Latin America. Much of her work has focused on Peru, but she has also carried out research in Nicaragua, Cuba, and Southern Mexico. She is the author of Between Field and Cooking Pot: The Political Economy of Marketwomen in Peru; After Revolution: Mapping Gender and Cultural Politics in Neoliberal Nicaragua; The Tourism Encounter: Fashioning Latin American Nations and Histories; and her latest book, Women’s Place in the Andes: Engaging Decolonial Feminist Anthropology (U of California Press, 2018), examines feminist debates centering Andean women from the 1970s forward. She is now writing a multi-sited ethnography, Scaling Differences: Place, Race, and Gender in Andean Peru, based on her research in an Indigenous community, a provincial Andean city, and among Andean migrants in Lima. Her articles and book chapters have appeared in numerous venues, and she has won research awards and fellowships from the Fulbright, Wenner-Gren, and Rockefeller Foundations, among others.
Education
PhD SUNY Buffalo, 1981; MA, SUNY Buffalo, 1976; BA, Tufts University, 1973
Publications
Selected Publications:
Books
2019 El lugar de las mujeres andinas: retos para la antropología feminista descolonial.
Translation of 2018 book with new preface, Lima, Peru: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos.
2018 Women’s Place in the Andes: Engaging Decolonial Feminist Anthropology. University of California Press. June.
2012 Después de la Revolución: Género y Cultura Política en Nicaragua Neoliberal. Translation of 2001 book with new preface. Managua, Nicaragua: Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y Centroamérica.
2011 The Tourism Encounter: Fashioning Latin American Nations and Histories. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
2008 Entre la chacra y la olla: Cultura, economía política y las vendedoras de mercado en el Perú. Translation of 1998 book, with new preface. Lima, Peru: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos.
2001 After Revolution: Mapping Gender and Cultural Politics in Neoliberal Nicaragua Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press.
1998 Between Field and Cooking Pot: The Political Economy of Marketwomen in Peru. Revised edition. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press.
Edited Journals
2022 Special issue of Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 17(1), The Persistence of Race in Peru: Intersectionality, Coloniality, and Power, co-editor with Amy Cox Hall and Cristina Alcalde. Published online 2021 and in print February 2022.
2011 Special issue of Voices 11(1), (journal of the Association for Feminist Anthropology) in honor of Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, guest editor.
2008 Special issue of Latin American Perspectives 35(4), Youth and Cultural Politics in Latin America, first co-editor, with Jon Wolseth.
2005 Special issue of Critique of Anthropology 25(3), Autonomy in an Age of Globalization: The Vision of June Nash, first co-editor, with Lynn Stephen.
2002 Special issue of Latin American Perspectives 29(2), Gender and Same-Sex Desire, second co-editor, with James N. Green.
Journal articles
2022 “Revisiting Race and Ethnicity in Peru: Intersectional and Decolonizing Perspectives,”introduction to special issue of Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 17(1) on The Persistence of Race in Peru: Intersectionality, Power, and Coloniality. Co-author with Amy Cox Hall and Cristina Alcalde. Published online 2021.
2022 “‘The Real Indigenous are Higher Up’: Race, Place, and Gender in Andean Peru,” Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 17(1), special issue on The Persistence of Race in Peru: Intersectionality, Power, and Coloniality. Published online 8/24/20 at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17442222.2020.1809080 (print version Feb 2022).
2018 « Les ‘Sandalistes’ recyclés : de la révolution aux stations balnéaires dans le nouveau Nicaragua. », special issue on « Nicaragua : Sandinismo 2.0 ? » in Cahiers des Amériques Latines 87(1): 37-67. French translation of chapter 2 in The Tourism Encounter: Fashioning Latin American Nations and Histories (Stanford University Press 2011).
2017 “Commentary” on Lynn Stephen’s article, “Bearing Witness: Testimony in LatinAmerican Anthropology and Related Fields,” Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 22(1):110-112.
2012 “Theorizing Gender, Race, and Cultural Tourism in Latin America: A View from Peru and Mexico,” special issue on Race, Gender, Ethnicity, and Sexuality in Latin American Tourism, Latin American Perspectives 39(6):36-50.
2011 “Che, Chevys, and Hemingway’s Daiquiris: Cuban Tourism in a Time of Globalization,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 30(1):50-63, issue on Island Tourism in the Americas.
2010 “Sex and Sentiment in Cuban Tourism,” Caribbean Studies 38(2):93-115, issue in honor of Helen I. Safa, co-edited by A. Lynn Bolles and Kevin A. Yelvington.
2004 “Recycled Sandalistas: From Revolution to Resorts in the New Nicaragua,” American Anthropologist 106(3):541-555.
2003 “Out in Nicaragua: Local and Transnational Desires After the Revolution,” Cultural Anthropology 18(3):304-328.
2001 “Nicaraguan Narratives of Development, Nationhood, and the Body,” Journal of Latin American Anthropology 6(1):84-119.
Book chapters
n.d. “Gender: Anthropology of the Body Through an Andean Lens.” In The Cambridge Handbook of the Anthropology of the Body. Edited by Adeline Masquelier and Andrew McDowell. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Forthcoming.
n.d. (with Maja Jeranko) “Decolonizing Methods in Feminist Ethnography: Reflections from Andean Peru and Coastal Ecuador.” In The Routledge Handbook to Feminist Anthropology.Edited by Pamela Geller. New York: Routledge. In press.
2024 “Afterword: Andinxs as Provocation for a New Generation of Andean Researchers.” In Decolonizing Andean Identities: Andinxs, Activism, and Social Change. Edited by Rebecca Irons and Phoebe Martin. London: University College of London Press. In press.
2023 “Foreword.” In Re-Centering: Anticolonial Feminist Studies of Tourism. Edited by Frances Julia Riemer. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
2023 “Foreword.” In Higher Education, State Repression, and Neoliberal Reform in Nicaragua: Reflections from a University Under Fire. Edited by Wendi Bellanger, Serena Cosgrove, and Irina Carlota Silber. Routledge.
2021 (with Justin Perez) “Sexualities in Latin America and the Caribbean.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Latin America. Full update of 2014 article. Edited by Ben Vinson. New York: Oxford University Press.
2021 (with Amy Cox Hall) “Gender in Postcolonial Latin America,” in Oxford Bibliographies in Latin American Studies. Full update of 2012 article. Edited by Ben Vinson. New York: Oxford University Press.
2021 (with Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld) “Afterword.” In Norms and Illegality: Intimate Ethnographies and Politics, edited by Cristiana Panella and Walter Little. Pp.197-202. Lanham,MD: Lexington Books. In press.
2020 “Peru and Nicaragua: Tourism Development in Postconflict Eras.” In Tourism Planning and Development in Central and South America. Edited by Carlos Monterrubio, Konstantinos Andriotis, and Dimitrios Stylidis. Pp. 156-172. UK: CABI.
2019 “Nicaraguan Legacies: Advances and Setbacks in Feminist and LGBTQ Activism,” in A Nicaraguan Exceptionalism? Debating the Legacy of the Sandinista Revolution. Edited by Hilary Francis. Pp. 171-184. London: Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS), University of London.
2019 “Culture and Economy in the Urban Global South: Braided Inequalities among Andean Migrants in Lima, Peru.” In The Popular Economy in Urban Latin America: Informality, Materiality, and Gender in Commerce, edited by Juliane Müller and Eveline Dürr. Pp. 133-151. Lexington Books.
2018 LGBTQ Sexualities and Social Movements, in The Routledge Handbook of Latin American Development. Edited by Julie Cupples, Marcela Palomino-Schalscha, and Manuel Prieto. Pp. 308-318. Routledge Press.
2018 “Sexuality and Gender,” in The Andean World. Edited by Linda J. Seligmann and Kathleen Fine-Dare. Routledge Worlds series. Routledge Press. In press.
2017 “Desigualdades entrelazadas: repensando la raza, el género y el indigenismo en el Perú andino,” in Racismo y lenguaje. Edited by Virginia Zavala and Michele Back. Lima, Peru: PUCP Press (Fondo Editorial PUCP).
2016 “Latin American Travel: The Other Side of Tourism Encounters,” in Global Latin America. Edited by Matthew Gutmann and Jeffrey Lesser. Berkeley: University of California Press.
2014 “Sexualities in Latin America and the Caribbean,” in Oxford Bibliographies in Latin American Studies. Edited by Ben Vinson. New York: Oxford University Press.
2013 “Street Economies in the Urban Global South: Where Are They Heading and Where Are We Heading?,” in Street Economies: Cultural Politics in the Urban Global South. Edited by Karen Tranberg Hansen, Lynn Milgram, and Walter Little. Santa Fe: SAR Press.
2012 “Gender in Postcolonial Latin America,” in Oxford Bibliographies in Latin American Studies. Edited by Ben Vinson. New York: Oxford University Press.
2012 “Intimate Encounters: Sex and Power in Nicaraguan Tourism,” in Central America in the New Millennium: Living Transition and Reimagining Democracy. Edited by Ellen Moodie and Jennifer L. Burrell. Amsterdam: Berghahn Books.
2003 “Nicaragua,” in Women’s Issues in Central and South America. Edited by Amy Lind. Pp. 335-360. Westport, CN: Greenwood Publishing Group.
2001 “Market/places as Gendered Spaces: Market/women’s Studies Over Two Decades,” in Women Traders in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Mediating Identities, Marketing Wares. Edited by Linda J. Seligmann. Pp. 228-239. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.