A.J. Faas
Professor and Graduate Coordinator
Ph.D. University of South Florida
Expertise:
Environmental Anthropology, Political Anthropology, and Economic Anthropology
Office Hours:
Will resume Spring 2025
Clark Hall 404L
408-924-5732
aj.faas@sjsu.edu
Google Scholar · Sapiens · New Books in Anthro · Disasters Deconstructed
A.J. Faas (PhD, Anthropology, University of South Florida) studies disasters, environmental crises, and displacement and resettlement. He focuses on the anthropology of the state, postcolonialism, cooperation and reciprocity, economic anthropology, organizations and bureaucracy, and the politics of nature, culture, and memory. His most recent book is In the Shadow of Tungurahua: Disaster Politics in Highland Ecuador (Rutgers University Press, 2023), which explores the politics of how disasters are made and contested, cooperation in disaster, and the story of a more-than-human lifeworld in the shadow of a grandmother volcano where the people of Penipe are envisioning new futures according to their own cultural logics of the good.
Faas is co-editor, with Eric C. Jones, of the edited volume, Social Network Analysis of Disaster Response, Recovery, and Adaptation (2018); and co-editor, with Roberto E. Barrios, of the 2015 special issue of Human Organization on “The Applied Anthropology of Disasters.” He is the editor of the 2016 special issue of The Annals of Anthropological Practice on “Continuity and Change in the Applied Anthropology of Risk, Hazards, and Disaster” and the 2017 special issue of the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology on “Changing Practices of Andean Cooperation and Reciprocity in the Twenty-First Century.”
Selected Bibliography of Recent Publications
Faas, A. J., Simon Jarrar, and Noémie Gonzalez Bautista. 2022. “Aging Queer in a Pandemic: Intersectionalities and Perceptions.” Disaster Prevention and Management 31(4):411-424.
Faas, A. J. 2023. In the Shadow of Tungurahua: Disaster Politics in Highland Ecuador. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Faas, A. J. 2022. “Antropologías de Desastres en Ecuador: Conexiones y Aperturas.” In Antropología de los Desastres en América Latina y el Caribe: El Estado del Arte, edited by Virginia García-Acosta, 181-210. México City: CIESAS, Gedisa, y Colegio de Michoacán.
Faas, A. J., Roberto Barrios, Virginia García-Acosta, Adriana Garriga-López, Seven Mattes, and Jennifer Trivedi. 2020. “Entangled Roots and Otherwise Possibilities: The Anthropology of Disasters COVID-19 Research Agenda.” Special Issue on COVID-19. Human Organization 79(4): 333–342.
Faas, A. J., and Elizabeth Marino. 2020. “Mythopolitics of “Community”: An Unstable but Necessary Category.” Disaster Prevention and Management 29(4):481-484.
Marino, Elizabeth, and A. J. Faas. 2020. “Is Vulnerability an Outdated Concept? After Subjects and Spaces.” Annals of Anthropological Practice 44(1):33-46.
Faas, A. J. 2020. “Anthropologies of Disasters in Ecuador: Connections and Apertures.” In Anthropology and Disasters in Latin America and the Caribbean: The State of the Art, edited by Virginia García-Acosta, 102-125. New York: Routledge.
Faas, A. J., Roberto E. Barrios, Elizabeth Marino, and Julie Koppel Maldonado. 2020. “Disasters and Climate Change-Related Displacements and Resettlements: Cultural and Political Ecologies of Space, Power, and Practice.” In The Angry Earth: Disasters in Anthropological Perspective, 2nd ed., edited by Anthony Oliver-Smith and Susanna Hoffman, 345-356. New York: Routledge.
Faas, A. J., Anne-Lise K. Velez, Branda L. Nowell, and Toddi A. Steelman. 2019. “Methodological Considerations in Pre- and Post-Emergency Network Identification and Data Collection for Disaster Risk Reduction: Lessons from Wildfire Response Networks in the American Northwest.” International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 40: 101260.
Mason, Sophie Shan, and A.J. Faas. 2019. “Culture at Work in Disaster Interventions: Practitioners at the 2017 United Nations Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction.” Proceedings of the 2018 Conference of the Southwestern Anthropological Association.
Lei, Sun, and A. J. Faas. 2018. “Social Production of Disasters and Disaster Social Constructs: An Exercise in Disambiguation and Reconciliation.” Disaster Prevention and Management 27(5):623-635 [pdf].
Faas, A. J. 2018. “Petit Capitalisms in Disaster, or the Limits of Neoliberal Imagination: Displacement, Recovery, and Opportunism in Highland Ecuador.” Economic Anthropology 5(1):32-44 [pdf].
Faas, A. J. 2017. “Enduring Cooperation: Time, discipline, and minga practice in disaster-induced displacement and resettlement in the Ecuadorian Andes.” Human Organization 76(2):99-108 [pdf].
Faas, A.J., Anne-Lise Velez, Clare FitzGerald, Branda Nowell, and Toddi Steelman. 2017. “Patterns of Preference and Practice: Bridging Actors in Wildfire Response Networks in the American Northwest.” Disasters 41(3):527-548 [pdf].
Jones, Eric C., and A.J. Faas (eds.) 2017. Social Network Analysis of Disaster Response, Recovery, and Adaptation. New York: Butterworth-Heinemann [pdf].
Faas, A. J. 2016. “Continuity and Change in the Applied Anthropology of Risk, Hazards, and Disasters.” The Annals of Anthropological Practice 40(1):1-8 [pdf].
Faas, A. J. 2016. “Disaster Vulnerability in Anthropological Perspective.” The Annals of Anthropological Practice 40(1):9-22 [pdf].
Faas, A.J., and Roberto Barrios. 2015. “Applied Anthropology of Risk, Hazards, and Disasters.” Human Organization 74(4):287-295 [pdf].
