Margaret Brown with friend in Madagascar.

MARGARET L. BROWN Ph. D. , Washington University,1999 Asst. Professor, Sociocultural 314-935-8279 mbrown [at] artsci.wustl.edu

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My research is motivated by long-standing questions in the social sciences concerning the relationship between structure and agency, in combination with an interest in the relationship between individual beliefs and their social and cultural foundations. Currently, one of the primary questions driving my research is: In what ways do cultural beliefs and practices provide a "toolkit" for evaluating and demonstrating trustworthiness? In my dissertation research, conducted in northeastern Madagascar, I focused on the structural underpinnings of trust and mistrust in families. I am currently working on a book manuscript, based on my dissertation, addressing the connection between the depth of interdependence between related individuals and their capacity to develop trusting social relations outside of familial relationships.

I have recently begun a new research project examining the cultural history and contemporary politics and economics of vanilla production and trade in northeastern Madagascar. In this project, I am expanding my interests in the connections between individual beliefs, culture, and social structure. In addition to conducting an ethnographic study of vanilla farmers and traders, I am examining the political and economic institutions that structure relations at various points in the vanilla chain of production and export.

I am active in the Social Thought and Analysis program and the Center for New Institutional Social Sciences. My courses are frequently cross-listed in African and Afro-American Studies, Political Science, and Social Thought and Analysis. I teach courses on inequality, economic anthropology, and kinship and the family.

Courses

Introduction to Cultural Anthropology; Households, Families and Marriage in Cross-Cultural Perspective; Power and Authority; Anthropology of Slavery; Systems of Inequality, Economic Anthropology

Publications

Brown, Margaret

n.d. Compensating for Distrust Among Kin. In Distrust, Russell Hardin, ed. Under review by Russell Sage.

2001 Contracting as Social Process: Marriage Contracts and Reconciliation Agreements in Northeastern Madagascar. Manuscript under review.