Home Cooking in the Global Village

Belize, a tiny corner of the Caribbean wedged into Central America, has been a fast food nation since buccaneers and pirates first stole ashore. As early as the 1600s it was already caught in the great paradox of globalization: how can you stay local and relish your own home cooking, while tasting the delights of the global marketplace? Menus, recipes and bad colonial poetry combine with Wilk's sharp anthropological insight to give an important new perspective on the perils and problems of globalization.

Fast Food/ Slow Food

Off the Edge, Experiments in Cultural Analysis

Co-edited with Orvar Lofgren

Household Ecology

Development and economic change are often seen as destructive to the family and to other traditional forms of social organization. Wilk's study of household ecology reveals that the Kekchi Maya of Belize have responded by creating new forms of family organization, working together to face challenges posed by development. Not merely survivors of an ancient splendor, the Kekchi Maya build upon their rich heritage to approach such problems as ethnic strife and rainforest destruction as creative agents.

Wilk combines a wealth of detail on agricultural calendars, hunting practices, land tenure, and labor exchanges in a general interpretation of cultural and ecological transformation. He provides a comprehensive analysis of how tropical farmers survive in the difficult rainforest environment, tracing the ingenuity and adaptability of Mayan culture. Fully incorporating the historical context of ecological processes, he documents the importance of household organization in shaping the trajectory of ecological change and shows how delicate this adaptation can be. Analyzing household response to localized economic and ecological settings, Wilk argues that the transformation of the rural economy and of Maya culture proceeds through the conjunction of global and local processes.

The Kekchi refuse to fit into the models of economic evolution set forth in existing scholarship. This sensitive and well-written study challenges current orthodoxies about economic and social change and suggests new approaches to rural development and household ecology.

Economies and Cultures

Co- authored with Lisa Cliggett in the second edition

More than any other anthropological subdiscipline, economic anthropology constantly questions and debates the practical motives of people as they go about their daily lives. Tracing the history of the dialog between anthropology and economics, Richard R. Wilk and Lisa C. Cliggett move economic anthropology beyond the narrow concerns of earlier debates and place the field directly at the center of current issues in the social sciences. They focus on the unique strengths of economic anthropology as a meeting place for symbolic and materialist approaches and for understanding human beings as both practical and cultural. In so doing, the authors argue for the wider relevance of economic anthropology to applied anthropology and identify other avenues for interaction with economics, sociology, and other social and behavioral sciences. The second edition of Economies and Societies contains an entirely new chapter on gifts and exchange that critically approaches the new literature in this area, as well as a thoroughly updated bibliography and guide for students for finding case studies in economic anthropology.

Time, Consumption and Everyday Life

Co-edited with Frank Trentmann and Elizabeth Shove

Has material civilization spun out of control, becoming too fast for our own well-being and that of the planet? This book confronts these anxieties and examines the changing rhythms and temporal organization of everyday life. How do people handle hurriedness, burn-out and stress? Are slower forms of consumption viable?

In case studies covering the United States, Asia and Europe, international experts follow routines and rhythms, their emotional and political dynamics and show how they are anchored in material culture and everyday practice. Running themes of the book are questions of coordination and disruption; cycles and seasons; and the interplay between power and freedom, and between material and natural forces. The result is a volume that brings studies of practice, temporality and material culture together to open up a new intellectual agenda.