AMORY STARR

As a scholar and professor, I studied political economy and social movements, with a focus on African American, indigenous, and postcolonial peoples. My dissertation anticipated the emergence of a global movement against multinational corporations and I participated in anti-WTO activism. In 1995 I developed a course called The Political Economy of Food, which I taught at 4 universities until 2009.
Academic Archive
Food and agriculture have consumed more of my attention as I recognized the centrality of pleasure to effective politics. A decade of interviews with producers has taught me that a concern with quality delivers good food, good work, social solidarity, and ecological care. These concerns are explored in my book Artisan Modern and its accompanying magazine and the podcast, Quality of Life, about home, travel, shopping, eating, and work.
Books & Projects about Food and Objects
Disappointed with life as an academic and activist, I found the connection I sought through dance and abruptly developed a career as an artist.This was equal parts ecstasy and brinksmanship. Eventually I dragged the social scientist to the scene to document of the facts of the case in a dense and stark little book.
The Dark Silences of Argentine Tango
Throughout my life, people have remarked on my power. Recently I began to document how I go about it.
Power Tools
As a scholar and professor, I studied political economy and social movements, with a focus on African American, indigenous, and postcolonial peoples. My dissertation anticipated the emergence of a global movement against multinational corporations and I participated in anti-WTO activism. In 1995 I developed a course called The Political Economy of Food, which I taught at 4 universities until 2009.
Academic Archive
Food and agriculture have consumed more of my attention as I recognized the centrality of pleasure to effective politics. A decade of interviews with producers has taught me that a concern with quality delivers good food, good work, social solidarity, and ecological care. These concerns are explored in my book Artisan Modern and its accompanying magazine and the podcast, Quality of Life, about home, travel, shopping, eating, and work.
Books & Projects about Food and Objects
Disappointed with life as an academic and activist, I found the connection I sought through dance and abruptly developed a career as an artist.This was equal parts ecstasy and brinksmanship. Eventually I dragged the social scientist to the scene to document of the facts of the case in a dense and stark little book.
The Dark Silences of Argentine Tango
Throughout my life, people have remarked on my power. Recently I began to document how I go about it.
Power Tools
As a scholar and professor, I studied political economy and social movements, with a focus on African American, indigenous, and postcolonial peoples. My dissertation anticipated the emergence of a global movement against multinational corporations and I participated in anti-WTO activism. In 1995 I developed a course called The Political Economy of Food, which I taught at 4 universities until 2009.
Academic Archive
Food and agriculture have consumed more of my attention as I recognized the centrality of pleasure to effective politics. A decade of interviews with producers has taught me that a concern with quality delivers good food, good work, social solidarity, and ecological care. These concerns are explored in my book Artisan Modern and its accompanying magazine and the podcast, Quality of Life, about home, travel, shopping, eating, and work.
Books & Projects about Food and Objects
Disappointed with life as an academic and activist, I found the connection I sought through dance and abruptly developed a career as an artist.This was equal parts ecstasy and brinksmanship. Eventually I dragged the social scientist to the scene to document of the facts of the case in a dense and stark little book.
The Dark Silences of Argentine Tango
Throughout my life, people have remarked on my power. Recently I began to document how I go about it.
Power Tools

I am an economist who knows that popular understanding of and political power over the economy is crucial to freedom and self-determination of communities. We are engaged in social movements to establish authority over the conditions which affect our lives, the power to protect our ecosystems and cultures, the control to create meaningful work, the right to eat delicious and healthy food, the information to be our own doctors, and the physical and psychological time and space to be creative.

I do not believe we need multinational corporations, supermarkets, genetically modified organisms, or for-profit healthcare organizations to achieve these things. 

I am interested in indigenous cosmologies and visions of development, sustainability and permaculture, alterglobalization, participatory democracy, good work, great food, and creativity.

My education includes a Ph.D. in Sociology (Political Economy) from the University of California, Santa Barbara (advisors Richard Flacks, Mark Juergensmeyer) and a Masters in City Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (advisor Mel King). As an undergraduate, I studied at M.I.T.’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies (advisor Otto Peine), which promoted collaborations between artists and engineers to create public and participatory artwork, as part of a Bachelors of Science in Architecture and Design. I also have a Certificate in Permaculture from a designers course taught by Bill Mollison himself.

After 11 years of University professorship, In 2009, I retired from academia.

My second career was as a professional dancer. My company TangoForge offers the only anatomically correct, comprehensive curriculum. My performances and films connect tango with the African diaspora and contemporary gender concepts. In 2020, I brought the social scientist to the scene to write Until Forever, the first comprehensive analysis of Argentine Tango as popular culture.

Love & Rage,

                             Amory

 

This website collects my writing on political economy, consumption, and personal power. From the home page you can shift between these topics. The website also contains my academic archive.

 

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