He specializes in anthropological political economy and the study of inequality within different forms of social organization. His current research focuses on the social transformations wrought by changing economies and human ecologies among tribal peoples in the Eastern Amazonian fringe in Brazil. He has published on ritual, gender, and industrial soybean agriculture, among other topics. His book, Rain Forest Exchanges: Industry and Community on an Amazonian Frontier (Smithsonian Institution Press) is a historical study of the interaction of indigenous communities and extractive industries. He has been a senior Fulbright scholar at the University of Bras’lia and a Visiting Distinguished Lecturer at Rhodes University in South Africa. He is currently a research associate at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.