PUBLICATIONS and ONGOING RESEARCH PROJECTS
Environmental politics and conflicts over natural resources
Deborah Avant, Devin Finn, and Tricia Olsen. “Can CSR Strategy Mediate Conflict over Extraction? Evidence from Two Mines in Peru.” World Development Vol. 170, October 2023.
Climate resilience and local knowledge in the Andes-Amazon region: social and political strategies for resource stewardship and defense
Critical mineral extraction in countries with weak democratic practices: Effects of clean energy development on domestic institutions (collaborative project funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York)
Forensic politics
Constructing memory and citizenship from burial sites in Latin America: a comparative study of post-war forensic politics in Peru and Colombia
“Forensic politics” proposes an agenda for research on searching for bodies, understanding violence, and political mobilization after civil wars
Devin Finn. 2020. “The Political Agency of Victims through Transnational Processes of Forensic Anthropology and Memory Construction in Latin America,” chapter in Agency in Transnational Memory Politics, eds. Jenny Wustenberg and Aline Sierp. Berghahn Books.
Wartime and postconflict dynamics
Local political struggles and Maoist rebels’ networks: ideology and peasant mobilization in Telangana, India (1946-1951): discussion here.
“Humanizing the Enemy”: How Colombian citizens and demobilized combatants understand and practice trust in behavioral games (with Sebastián Bitar, Angelika Rettberg, and Michael Weintraub)
Civilian protection and aid delivery during civil war: the politics behind early warning of mass atrocities in Sri Lanka, 2000-2009 (chapter of an edited volume on Preventing Mass Atrocities, which I am co-editing with Andrew Bennett)
DISSERTATION (2017)
Civilian Participation in Violence and Politics: Ideology, Networks, and Action in Peru and India
How and why do ordinary people in democratic states participate in violent revolution? I explore variation in the confluence of civilians' participation in status quo politics - through both electoral channels and civil society action - and in violent insurgencies that seek to conquer the state. During war, civilians are agents and articulators of political mobilization, and rebels coopt and exploit social and political networks, which draw on historical forms of organization and activism as well as a long trajectory of political ideas about race, citizenship, and class.
I examined how civilians in democracies participate in rebel groups' ideas and violent acts, and how they perceive their options for political expression and resistance in general. I spent over ten months in the field in two countries - India and Peru - in throbbing cities and quiet villages and the roads that connect them. I conducted interviews with former left party leaders, activists, and peasants, and spent time in areas affected by wartime violence. I studied local and national documents in the archives and developed an ethnography of the ways that people understand their participation in a range of political activities, from protests and voting to civil resistance and seeking justice.
Through a comparative study of Peru's Shining Path and the Naxalite movement, I argue that an insurgency's particular ideological interpretations and conceptions of membership shape civilian support by influencing everyday social relations between rebels and civilians. Rebels' ideas, implemented through indoctrination and strategic action, change networks of participation and civilians' opportunities to engage in politics.
ANALYTICAL WRITING AND COMMENTARY
“Escaping the Dirty Side of Clean Energy?” New America Foundation Brief. Deborah Avant, Devin Finn, Tricia D. Olsen, and Alvin Camba. 6 Sept. 2023.
"More people in the U.S. protested in June than in any month since the January Women’s Marches." Monkey Cage, Washington Post, 25 July 2017.
"Power Politics Meets Personal Persuasion: The Role of the Next UN Secretary General," Political Violence at a Glance, 20 September 2016.
"Legacy of Violence and Peru's Politics: Activism Against Authoritarianism," Political Violence at a Glance, 12 July 2016.
"Broadening the Conversation: From Research Transparency to a Politics of Knowledge Building," Political Violence at a Glance, 16 February 2016.
"Combating Corruption and Violence: A Struggle for Accountability on Two Fronts," Political Violence at a Glance, 20 October 2015.
"Unsilencing Pakistan: A Symposium on Nonviolent Activism Against Violence," Political Violence at a Glance, 16 June 2015.
"Nonviolent Mobilization Against State Impunity Through Forensic Anthropology," Political Violence at a Glance, 17 March 2015.
"Kejriwal's AAP Looks for Second Chance in Delhi Vote," Suffragio, 6 February 2015.