David Griffith
David Griffith is a cultural anthropologist who specializes in economic anthropology, including the study of commercial fishing communities and labor and immigration issues related to both coastal peoples and to general social scientific theory. He has published widely on temporary foreign contract workers in seafood processing and on fishing communities of the South Atlantic, Mid-Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. He has received funding from National Science Foundation, NOAA Fisheries and several other foundations and government agencies over the past three decades. His recent work focuses on the emergence of sharing economies in Puerto Rico following Hurricane María and the relationships between environmental forcing and migration in Honduras, Puerto Rico, Syria and northern Africa.
After five years as interim director of the Institute for Coastal Science and Policy, he was appointed chair of the Department of Coastal Studies.
.“I’m honored to have the opportunity to occupy a leadership role in the new Coastal Studies Department and to assist with establishing connections across ECU’s multiple campuses for research, education, economic development and community engagement,” Griffith said. “I see ECU’s Outer Banks Campus as particularly significant to the state as we deal with the multiple environmental threats facing coastal landscapes and marine seascapes. Through my own research as an anthropologist, I have been heartened by the resilience of North Carolina’s coastal peoples and hope to build on their social and cultural resources as we help shape the future.”
Education
University of Iowa, Anthropology, B.A. 1973
University of Iowa, Anthropology, M.A. 1979
University of Florida, Anthropology, Ph.D. 1983
Selected Professional Development
2013 to 2018: Interim Director, Institute for Coastal Science and Policy, ECU
2013 to Present: Thomas Harriot College of Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professor, ECU
2015 to Present: Member, Scientific and Statistical Committee, Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council
2004 to 2007: Member, Scientific and Statistical Committee, South Atlantic Fishery Management Council
2013 to Present: Consulting Social Scientist, ECS Federal, Inc. Washington, D.C.
2012 to 2016: Section Editor for Public Anthropology, American Anthropologist
2011 to Present: Friends of the Georgia Review Editorial Advisory Board member
Selected Publications
David Griffith, editor. (Mis)managing Migration: Guestworkers’ Experiences with North American Labor Markets. Santa Fe: School of American Research. 2014.
Alex Whiting, David Griffith, Stephen Jewett, Lisa Clough, Will Ambrose, and Jeffrey Johnson. Combining Iñupiaq and Scientific Knowledge: Ecology in Northern Kotzebue Sound, Alaska. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Sea Grant College. 2011.
David Griffith. American Guestworkers: Jamaicans and Mexicans in the U.S. Labor Market. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2006.
David Griffith and Manuel Valdés Pizzini. Fishers at Work, Workers at Sea: a Puerto Rican Journey through Labor and Refuge. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 2002.
Griffith, David. 2018 Enforced Economics: Individual Fishery Quotas and the privileging of economic science in the Gulf of Mexico Grouper-Tilefish Fishery. Human Organization 77 (1).
Griffith, David, Patricia Zamudio Grave, Rosalba Cortez Viveros, and Jeronimo Cabrera Cabrera. 2017. Losing Labor: Coffee, Migration, and Economic Change in Veracruz, Mexico. CAFÉ: Culture, Agriculture, Food, and the Environment. 39:35-42.
Griffith, David, Raquel Isuala, Pedro Torres, and Manuel Villa Cruz. 2016. “Migration, Labor Scarcity, and Deforestation in Honduran Cattle Country. Journal of Ecological Anthropology 18(1): 1-16.
Griffith, David. 2016. What we talk about when we talk about immigration. Practicing Anthropology 38(1): 44-45.
Griffith, David. 2016. Labor Contractors, Coyotes, and Travelers: the Migration Industry in Latin America and the U.S. South. EUTOPIA_Flasco 9:115-125.
Griffith, David, Brent Stoffle, and Michael Jepson. 2015. “Meeting National Standard 8: Ground-truthing social indicators of fishing in South Atlantic Coastal Communities.” Marine Fisheries Review 77(4): 9-19. doi: dx.doi.org/10.7755/MFR.77.4.2
Ambrose, W.G. Jr., Clough, L.M., Johnson, J.C., Griffith, D., Carroll, M.L., Greenacre, M., and Whiting, A. 2014. Interpreting local environmental change in coastal Alaska using traditional and scientific ecological knowledge. Frontiers in Marine Science 1:40.
doi:10.3389/fmars. 2014.00040
David Griffith, Carlos García Quijano, and Manuel Valdes Pizzini. 2013. A Fresh Defense: A Cultural Biography of Quality in Puerto Rican Fishing. American Anthropologist. 115(1): 17-28.
Ricardo Contreras and David Griffith. 2012. Managing Migration, Managing Motherhood: The Moral Economy of Gendered Migration. International Migration. 50(4):51-66.