Julia F. Paley

Julia Paley is on the faculty of both the School of Social Work and the Department of Anthropology. Her primary research interests focus on the multiple meanings and practices of democracy in various geographic contexts. Through fieldwork in Chile, she has explored the ways in which social organizations in a Santiago población (shantytown) created strategies to improve living conditions and analyze political phenomena in the post-dictatorship period. Through ongoing research in Ecuador--funded by the Fulbright Commission, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the National Science Foundation--she is investigating democracy promotion activities by international agencies in relation to citizen participation processes by alternative local governments. Dr. Paley's book Marketing Democracy: Power and Social Movements in Post-Dictatorship Chile (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001) won the 2001 Sharon Stephens award of the American Ethnological Society for the best first book by a junior scholar. Dr. Paley has also received an award for excellence in teaching urban studies. Other areas of research/scholarly interest: political anthropology, urban studies, Latin America.