What is my research all about?
For a variety of reasons, I have been doing some soul-searching recently, trying to identify the patterns and big issues that bind my research interests and projects together. Part of the rationale comes from having to start doing private fund-raising for the ASU Teotihuacan Research Laboratory . To communicate research to the public and to donors, one has to be able to describe it clearly and in terms that people find interesting and important. Part of the impetus comes from some collective soul-searching with my unit, the School of Human Evolution & Social Change. We are ten years old now, and we are launching a publicity and scientific outreach program. I just got an email asking me to encapsulate my research in one sentence. If you think that your work is far to complicated and nuanced for such a brief treatment, my response is, "F*** Nuance! " Another reason for working on these big issues is that I have always admired the way sociologist Robert Sampson does this. Sa...