Our Chair, Dan Montello, broke the following news on April 1, 2015:
“The news is official. Please join me in a warm Earthly welcome to our newest Affiliate Professor, Assistant Professor Jeffrey Hoelle of Anthropology. (Yes, the web page can be updated). Welcome, Jeff!”
Dr. Hoelle received his PhD from the University of Florida in 2011, and his research interests include human-environment interactions, space and place, conservation and development, Latin America, and cross-cultural cowboys and cattle cultures.
If the phrase “cross-cultural cowboys and cattle cultures” caught your attention, Jeff explains it this way: “My current research is focused on understanding the economic and cultural factors that contribute to the expansion of cattle raising in the western Amazon state of Acre, Brazil. I employ political ecology and practice theory frameworks to analyze how rubber tappers, colonists, and large-scale ranchers use and perceive cattle in relation to multi-scalar economic structures and conservation and development discourses and policies. I also examine the symbolic practices and preferences for a cattle-centered rural life that are expressed in cauboi (cowboy) and contri (country) popular culture in Acre. My interest in the economic, ecological, and cultural relationships between humans and cattle in Amazonia provides the foundation for an emerging research project in which I compare “cattle cultures” in the Americas, Africa, and India” (source).
