Dr. Harry Walker

Biography

Harry Walker is an Associate Professor specializing in anthropology with a focus on Latin America and indigenous peoples of Amazonia. He has conducted long-term fieldwork among the Urarina, a hunting and horticultural society in lowland Peru, investigating a diverse range of issues including selfhood, shamanism, law, materiality, sport, bureaucracy, egalitarianism, happiness, and commons. His recent research addresses the everyday experiences of justice and injustice. Walker's monograph, 'Watchful Eye,' discusses the tension between the cultural prioritization of individual autonomy and the strong sense of satisfaction and self-realization that emerges from relationships. He explores how concepts of moral emotions, such as love, anger, guilt, and comparative analyses of equality, fairness, responsibility, and entitlement shape practices of justice in Amazonia. Walker's work emphasizes the impacts of rapid transformations occurring in Amazonia and their implications for anthropological interpretation of social change.

Research Interests