Professor Stone is an ecological anthropologist who studies food and agricultural systems. He has recently been President of the Anthropology & Environment Society and a Guggenheim Fellow.
Glenn Stone's research is on environmental anthropology, political ecology, food studies, and science & technology studies. He is particularly interested in the social and political aspects of agricultural systems; agricultural sustainability; intensification and industrialization; indigenous knowledge; responses to population increase; agricultural biotechnology; and alternative food/farming systems. He has worked on past and contemporary nonindustrialized farmers in Africa, India, the Philippines, and North America.
One focus of his present research is on the spread of genetically modified crops in developing countries. After working in a laboratory specializing in transformation of tropical crops, and completing a multi-year, multi-village field study of Andhra Pradesh farmers as GM cotton was being adopted, he is starting a project on indigenous knowledge and technology change among rice and cotton farmers in India and the Philippines (including impacts of “Golden Rice”).
A second research focus is on the new small farm movement in North America, including the economic and ecological aspects of sustainability and historical perspectives on small farmers in Appalachia. A third focus of current work is on the politics of agricultural research and interventions.
Earlier research projects examined social and agricultural change among Kofyar and Tiv populations in Nigeria. With the Kofyar he analyzed the social organization of labor and landscape in an intensive, sustainable system. Research on the Tiv showed different responses to land scarcity, including conflict and the manipulation of local political processes to avoid intensification. He has also worked on Ancestral Puebloans (Anasazis), especially political and agricultural responses to population increase.
In 2007, he started the Village India Program, taking students to live and teach in Kalleda village in Andhra Pradesh (see photos for 2007 and 2008 on Flickr).
From 2011-2013, he was president of the Anthropology and Environment Society.
