HOLLAND, Dorothy (Ph.D., California, Irvine, 1974, Cary C. Boshamer Professor of Anthropology, President-Elect and President, Society for Psychological Anthropology 2001-2005) Identity and Agency, Activism, Social Movements, Cultural Studies, Environmental Studies, Schooling and Work, Gender, US, Nepal email: dholland@unc.edu click here for full CV

Research Background: Field Research: Trinidad, West Indies, Shango (1967--research for MA); Tutuila, American Samoa, Samoan ethnopsychology (1973, doctoral research); National Institute of Education funded ethnographic studies of school desegregation (1975-1977) and of women and schooling (1979-1981), both carried out in the southeastern United States; NSF funded study of women's critical commentary in Nepal (1991, 1986, 1990); NSF-funded study of computer programmers. NSF-funded research, "Estrangement from the Public Sphere: Economic Change, Democracy and Social Division in North Carolina" (1996-present) and Identity and Environmental Action: The U.S. Environmental Movement as a Context of Behavioral Change" (1996-present), both carried out in North Carolina.

Present Research: My theoretical interests revolve around identity, agency and social change, particularly that brought about by social movements. Several colleagues and I recently published Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds (1998, Harvard), a book, which along with a co-edited volume, History in Person: Enduring Struggles, Contentious Practice, Intimate Identities (2001, School of American Research Press), articulates a social practice theory of identity. Two previous co-edited volumes, The Cultural Production of the Educated Person (1996, SUNY) and Selves in Time and Place: Identities, Experience and History in Nepal (1998, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers) pursue similar issues in relation to education and in Nepali studies. Soon to be published efforts in this theoretical vein include:  a co-edited special issue of Ethos, entitled, Ethnographic Studies of Positioning and Subjectivity:  Narcotaffikers, Taiwanese Brides, Angry Loggers, School Troublemakers and a book chapter, “Self and Power in the World of Romance:  Extending Sociogenic Theories”.

The above projects, "Estrangement from the Public Sphere," and the study of the U.S. environmental movement, are large, collaborative ventures. Both projects investigate the new conditions for political and cultural activism and the importance of environmental issues in the public sphere. They also ask how social movements inhabit people's lives, becoming not only viable communities of practice but enduring cultural forms of desire.

A new article from the environmental movement study should be out soon:  “Multiple Identities in Practice:  On the Dilemmas of Being a Hunter and an Environmentalist in the USA” in the Dutch journal, Focaal.  Also, a new book chapter:  a co-authored piece, “Identity and Sustained Environmental Practice”.

Selected and Recent Publications (For publications from the North Carolina and Environmental Identities Projects, go to project links above):

Bartlett, L. and Dorothy Holland (2002) “Theorizing the Space of Literacy Practice.”  Ways of Knowing Journal.  VOL 2 No 1, May 2002 (To be reprinted in Literacy:  A Handbook, Routledge, 2003)

Holland, D., and J. Lave (2001), eds. History in Person: Enduring Struggles, Contentious Practice, Intimate Identities (The School of American Research Press)

Guldbrandsen, Thad and Dorothy C. Holland (2001) Encounters with the Supercitizen: Neoliberalism, Environmental Activism, and the American Heritage Rivers Initiative The Anthropological Quarterly. Special issue, Krista Harper, ed. 74(3): 124-134.

Holland, D., W. Lachicotte, D. Skinner and C. Cain (1998) Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds (Harvard University Press)

Skinner, Debra, Alfred Pach III, and Dorothy Holland. (eds.) (1998). Selves in Time and Place: Identities, Experience, and History in Nepal. (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.)

Levinson, B., D. Foley and D. Holland, eds. (1996). The Cultural Production of the Educated Person: Critical Ethnographies of Schooling and Local Practice. (State University of New York Press)

Holland, D. and M. Eisenhart. (1990) Educated in Romance: Women, Achievement, and College Culture. (The University of Chicago Press)

Holland, D. and M. Cole (1995) Between Discourse and Schema: Reformulating a Cultural-Historical Approach to Culture and Mind. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 26(4):1-16.

Holland, D. and D. Skinner (1995) Contested Ritual, Contested Femininities: (Re)Forming Self and Society in a Nepali Women's Festival. American Ethnologist 22(2):279-305.

Holland, D. and N. Quinn, eds. (1987) Cultural Models in Language and Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press. [Chinese language edition forthcoming from Laureate Book Co. Ltd of Taipei]