School of Social and Political Science

Background

Casey High’s research has focused on memory, social transformation and indigenous engagement with extractive economies in the Ecuadorian Amazon. His ongoing fieldwork with Waorani communities also explores language, indigenous politics, and the interface between Amazonian cosmology and development. His research and publications also examine the gendered and generational aspects of violence and memory in the context of urban migration. His book, Victims and Warriors: Violence, History, and Memory in Amazonia (2015), relates indigenous forms of memory to representations of Amazonian violence in colonial history, missionary texts, and contemporary cinema. He has also been involved in a collaborative project to document the Waorani language and has written on Waorani conflicts with the oil industry, environmental activism, and the changing politics of language.

He is co-editor of two books on contemporary anthropological theory and practice. These include How Do We Know? Evidence, ethnography, and the making of anthropological knowledge (2008) and The Anthropology of Ignorance: Ethnographic perspectives (2012). Before joining Edinburgh he was a postdoctoral researcher at the CNRS in Paris, and a lecturer in anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Selected publications

Books

2015. Victims and Warriors: Violence, History, and Memory in Amazonia. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

2012. The Anthropology of Ignorance: An Ethnographic Approach. With J. Mair and A. Kelly, eds. Palgrave Macmillan (Culture, Mind and Society Series).

2008. How Do We Know? Evidence, Ethnography and the Making of Anthropological Knowledge. With L. Chua and T. Lau, eds. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Journal special issues

2020. Conserving and Extracting Nature: Environmental Politics and Livelihoods in the New “Middle Grounds” of Amazonia (co-edited with R. Elliott Oakley). Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 25(2).

Journal articles

2023. "Civilized Elders and Isolated Ancestors: The Multiple Histories of Contemporary Amazonia." Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America 19(1): 39-55. 

2020. "'Our Land is Not For Sale!' Contesting Oil and Translating Environmental Politics in Amazonian Ecuador." Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 25(2): 301-323.

2020. "Conserving and Extracting Nature: Environmental Politics and Livelihoods in the New “Middle Grounds” of Amazonia." (co-authored with R. Elliott Oakley). Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 25(2): 236-247.

2018. "Bodies That Speak: Languages of Differentiation and Becoming in Amazonia. Language and Communication 63: 65-75.

2016. "A Little Bit Christian": Memories of conversion and community in post-Christian Amazonia." American Anthropologist 118(2): 270-283.

2015. "Keep on Changing: Recent Trends in Amazonian Anthropology." Reviews in Anthropology. 44(2): 1-24.

2013. "Lost and Found: Contesting isolation and cultivating contact in Amazonian Ecuador." Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. 3(3): 195-221.

2012. "Between Friends and Enemies: The Dynamics of Inter-Ethnic Relations in Amazonian Ecuador." With E. Reeve. Ethnohistory. 59(1): 141-162.

2010. "Warriors, Hunters, and Bruce Lee: Gendered Agency and the Transformation of Amazonian Masculinity." American Ethnologist. 37(4): 753-770.

2009. "Remembering the ‘Auca’: Violence and Generational Memory in Amazonian Ecuador." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 15: 719-736.

2009. "Victims and Martyrs: Converging Histories of Violence in Amazonian Anthropology and U.S. Cinema." Anthropology and Humanism. 34(1): 41-50.

2007. "Indigenous Organizations, Oil Development, and the Politics of Egalitarianism." Cambridge Anthropology. 26(2): 34-46.

Book chapters

2021. "The Nature of Loss: Ecological Nostalgia and Cultural Politics in Amazonia." In O. Ange and D. Berliner, eds. Ecological Nostalgias: Memory, Affect and Creativity in Times of Ecological Upheavals. Oxford: Berghahn. Pp. 84-106.

2016. "Warriors, Hunters, and Bruce Lee: Gendered Agency and the Transformation of Amazonian Masculinity." In D. Hodgson, ed. The Gender, Culture, and Power Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 253-263.

2015. "Ignorant Bodies and the Dangers of Shamanism in Amazonia." In T. Kirsch and R. Dilley, eds. Regimes of Ignorance: Anthropological perspectives on the reproduction of non-knowledge. Oxford: Berghahn. Pp. 91-114.

2014. "Dayuma's Story: Personal biography and intercultural relations in urban Amazonia." In S. Oakdale and M. Course, eds. Fluent Selves: Autobiography and personhood in Lowland South America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Pp. 35-68.

2012. "Shamans, Animals, and Enemies: Locating the Human and Non-Human in an Amazonian Cosmos of Alterity." In Personhood in the Shamanic Ecologies of Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia. M. Brightman, V. Grotti and O. Ulturgasheva , eds. Oxford: Berghahn. Pp. 130-135.

2012. "Between Knowing and Being: Ignorance in Anthropology and Amazonian Shamanism." In Anthropology of Ignorance: An Ethnographic Approach. J. Mair, C. High and A. Kelly, eds. Palgrave Macmillan. Pp. 119-136.

2012. "Making Ignorance an Ethnographic Object." With J. Mair and A. Kelly. In Anthropology of Ignorance: An Ethnographic Approach. Palgrave Macmillan. Pp. 1-32.

2008. "Introduction: Questions of Evidence." With L. Chua and T. Lau. In How Do We Know? Evidence, Ethnography and the Making of Anthropological Knowledge. Pp. 1-19.

2008. "End of the Spear: Re-imagining Amazonian History and Ethnography through Film." In How Do We Know? Evidence, Ethnography and the Making of Anthropological Knowledge. Pp. 76-96.

Review Articles

2010. "Agency and Anthropology." Review article in Ateliers du laboratoire d’ethnologie et de sociologie comparative (LESC). No. 34.