Walter E. Little

Walter Little studies the social and political economies of Latin American indigenous peoples, particularly, in Guatemala, Mexico, and the Albany, NY region. His multi-sited ethnographic research combines political economy and symbolic/interpretive perspectives in order to better understand the politics of identity, international aid and economic development, cultural heritage and tourism in urban places, and the everyday practices of handicrafts production and marketplace interactions.

In addition to the Department of Anthropology, he is affiliated with the Department of Latin American, U.S. Latino, and Caribbean Studies (LACS) and with the University at Albany program in Globalization Studies. In the aftermath of hurricane Stan, he co-founded the Guatemalan Emergency Relief Fund (2005-2010), a rapid response humanitarian organization to help reduce poverty and improve education in Maya communities. He is a founding board member of the Foundation for Developing Sustainable Societies, which has projects in the Yucatan. He is also a board member and previous director of the Institute for Mesoamerican Studies and a member of Triquis Sin Fronteras, a community-based organization that promotes Oaxaca Triqui culture and language in the Albany, N.Y. area.

He is the author of numerous articles, reviews, and books including Mayas in the Marketplace: Tourism, Globalization, and Cultural Identity (2004), which won Best Book of 2005 from the New England Council for Latin American Studies, and his co-edited volume, Economies in the Urban Global South (2013), which won the Society for the Anthropology of Work Book Prize in 2014. To read more about this book, "Anthropologist’s Research on Maya Street Vendors Receives Another Accolade". His most recent book is Norms and Illegality: Intimate Ethnographies and Politics (2021), co-edited with Cristiana Panella.