Robert Carmack

Office: Arts & Sciences Building, Room 201
Ph: (518) 442-4700
E-mail: rcarmack@albany.edu

Ph.D., UCLA, 1956

Interests: Social Anthropology, Ethnohistory, Mesoamerican Studies, Social Theory
Areas: Central America

Research Interests

Much of my research has been conducted among the Quiche-Mayas of highland Guatemala. I provided the ethnohistory research to correlate with the Department's excavations at the Quiche capital of Utatlan, as well as ethnographic correlates. I also have been conducting ethnographic fieldwork in both highland Guatemala and highland Chiapas. The focus of that work has been the dynamic interplay through time between politics and authority; how authority gets legitimized and how it is competed for in the political arena.

Recently, I helped open a project in Costa Rica, along with Robert Jarvenpa and others, to investigate the social changes taking place within a rural community in the Pacific South region of that country. We have concentrated our attention on the Chibchan-speaking natives of the community, and the very large Del Monte pineapple plantation located there. We have also focused on the ecological problems emerging in the community, and the politics of dealing with those problems.  We have an on-going research project in Masaya, Nicaragua, which over the past five years has involved both graduates and undergraduates in ethnographic and ethnohistoric field studies. We are currently seeking additional funding to continue our project on Nicaraguan culture and politics.

Finally, as part of an on-going search for theoretical perspective, I am continuing to work on a model that represents a synthesis of world system and Weberian theory.

Select Publications

Rebels of Highland Guatemala: The Quiche-Mayas of Momostenango. University of Oklahoma Press (1995).

Historia Antigua de America Central: del Poblamiento a la Conquista. FLASCO, Costa Rica (1992).

Harvest of Violence: The Maya Indians and the Guatemalan Crisis. University of Oklahoma Press (1988).

The Quiche-Mayas of Utatlan: The Evolution of a Highland Maya Kingdom. University of Oklahoma Press (1982).