Nicholas Copeland
Department of History
428 Major Williams Hall, 220 Stanger St., Blacksburg, VA 24061
ncopel@vt.edu
Dr. Nicholas Copeland is an associate professor in the Department of History.
His current projects include: Deceptive Alliances: Democracy and Counterinsurgency in Post-Revolutionary Guatemala (a book manuscript under review), and “Conflating Democracy: Countering State Violence in Neoliberal Guatemala” (an article under review at the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology).
- Political Imaginaries
- Governance
- Indigenous Politics
- Guatemala and Latin America
- Democracy
- Social Theory
- Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin
- M.A., University of Texas at Austin
- B.A., University of Texas at Austin
- Northwest Arkansas Center for Worker’s Justice, former Board Member
- American Anthropological Association
- Latin American Studies Association
- American Ethnological Society
- Society for Cultural Anthropology
- Outstanding Mentor: University of Arkansas, 2011
- Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Maryland, Latin American Studies Center, 2007
- HF Guggenheim Dissertation Fellowship, 2006
Books
The Democracy Development Machine: Neoliberalism, Radical Pessimism, and Authoritarian Populism in Mayan Guatemala. Cornell University Press, 2019
The World of Wal-Mart: Discounting the American Dream. Coauthored with Christine Labuski. Routledge, 2013
Select Journal Articles
“Regarding Development: Governing Indian Advancement in Post-Revolutionary Guatemala.” Economy and Society. 2015. 44(3)
“Mayan Imaginaries of Democracy: Interactive Sovereignties and Political Affect in Post-Revolutionary Guatemala.” American Ethnologist. 2014. 41(2): 305-319
“Greening the Counterinsurgency: The Deceptive Effects of Guatemala's Rural Development Plan of 1970.” Development and Change. 2012. (43)4:975-998
“‘Guatemala Will Never Change’: Radical Pessimism and the Politics of Personal Interest in the Western Highlands.” Journal of Latin American Studies. 2011. (43)3:485-515.
Book Chapter
2015. “Harvesting Structural Violence: Clientelist Exchange in San Pedro Necta, Huehuetenango.” In Poder local, incidencia política y gobernabilidad en los pueblos indígenas en Guatemala. Gema Sanchez Medero and Ruben Sanchez, eds. Madrid: Universidad Complutense.
- The Future of Improvement: Remaking Development in Neoliberal Guatemala. ($6,258) Dean's Faculty Fellowship, College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, Virginia Tech, 2015.
- (co-PI) Global Issues Initiative Grant: "Security, Inequality and Gender" ($10,000) Institute for Society, Culture, and Environment, Virginia Tech, 2013.
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General ItemThe World of Walmart
With Good Reason, 04/26/2019
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