Kate Browne’s research asks how people’s social identities and moral frameworks influence their economic values and practices. Toward this end, she has completed two major projects in the French Caribbean:

• a study of Martinique’s thriving informal economy which Browne documents as a strongly male, thoroughly cross-class phenomenon. The quest for economic autonomy that often inspires this activity is explained in part by the island’s social history and its ongoing tensions between local cultural identity and French nationalism. This work is elaborated in her 2004 book, Creole Economics as well as other publications. For a detailed summary, click here.
• a study of gender and entrepreneurship among Afro-Creole people who represent the demographic majority in Martinique, but who remain an economic minority. Browne learned that black men and women entrepreneurs tend to approach business ownership and employee management differently. For many reasons, women’s strategies are helping unknot tightly bound hostilities of workers toward bosses, problems that have plagued workplace environments since abolition. The story revealed by this research is now portrayed in a new documentary film. Au Tournant de l’Histoire (original French version) Lifting the Weight of History (English subtitled version). Au Tournant de l’Histoire was broadcast internationally on French TV during May 2008 and is due to be released in English with subtitles in late summer 2008. Browne’s documentary is a collaborative project with filmmaker Ginny Martin and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation.

Katherine E. Browne, Ph.D.
Professor of Anthropology
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1783

SUBFIELD: Cultural Anthropology

RESEARCH: Cultural identity, race, morality, gender, comparative colonization, social theory, research methods, French Caribbean, New Orleans

Browne’s interest in the relationship between moral and social identities on the one hand, and economic values and practices on the other, is also taking form in a new edited volume with colleague Lynne Milgram. Their book, Economics and Morality: Anthropological Approaches includes 11 chapters by an international group of scholars and an extensive Introduction by Browne. Economics and Morality is in production at AltaMira Press and scheduled to be released in October 2008.

Browne’s newest research is inspired by the unnecessary devastation of Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast and the urgency of public anthropology to speak to large-scale social ills. In an effort to reach the broadest possible audience, Browne initiated a documentary film project with Ginny Martin, Emmy-winning filmmaker (with whom she created the Caribbean film about women entrepreneurs). Ethnographic work with a large, extended Afro-Creole family from the French Caribbean area of New Orleans presented a natural extension of Browne’s longterm fieldwork in Martinique. The two-year collaboration with Martin resulted in Still Waiting: Life After Katrina, a one-hour documentary that aired on PBS in August, September, and October 2007 in more than 300 US cities.

Browne’s work with disaster sociologist Lori Peek produced funding for this and other Katrina-related research projects. In September 2005, Browne and Peek teamed up to lead a Katrina Research Team at Colorado State University. They applied for NSF funding to study the impact of Katrina on residents of the New Orleans area, including those who had evacuated to Denver. The award of NSF funding helped them launch numerous research studies, the documentary film project, and several graduate student theses. These projects are all focused on family issues such as family cohesion, strain and dissolution, differential access to material and psychological resources, and gaps between what Katrina survivors need and what is actually available to them. For more information about the publications, talks, symposia, and theses that are emerging from this project, please visit “Research Projects.” For media coverage of this work, see “Media Coverage.”