Robert Winthrop is an environmental anthropologist based in Washington, D.C. with broad training in the social sciences and four decades of practical experience in addressing complex problems of socio-environmental systems. He has worked as a consultant, a U.S. government social scientist, and an academic, focusing on energy and resource extraction, climate change, indigenous rights, and social impact assessment. 

From 2002 to 2017 he was Senior Social Scientist at the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management in Washington, DC, guiding the application of economics, anthropology, and other social sciences to land and resource management decisions from northern Alaska to the Mexican border. From 1981 to 2000 he was a principal of Cultural Solutions, providing social impact assessment, ethnography, and conflict resolution – primarily concerning disputes over American Indian rights and interests and the development of natural resources. 

His research and professional practice involve four areas:

(1) The social impacts of environmental change, including resource development and climate change –

• Explaining differential vulnerability to climate change: A social science review (co-author), Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 2018. 

• Environment and resources.  In: A Handbook of Practicing Anthropology, 2013. 

(2) Stewardship and other frameworks for environmental decision-making –

• Culturally Reflexive Stewardship: Conserving Ways of Life. In: The Oxford Handbook of Public Heritage Theory and Practice, 2018.

• The Strange Case of Cultural Services: Limits of the Ecosystem Services Paradigm.  Ecological Economics, 108:208-214, 2014. 

(3) Culture, heritage, and human rights —

• Defining a Right to Culture, and Some Alternatives. Cultural Dynamics 14 (2):161-83, 2002.

• Persistent Peoples: Mechanisms of Cultural Survival in Southern Oregon and Northwestern California. In: Living With the Land: the Indians of Southwest Oregon, 1990. 

(4) The application of anthropological theory to public policy –

• From Global Change Science to Action with Social Sciences (co-author).  Nature Climate Change 4:656-659, 2014.   

• Trade Liberalization and Culture (co-author).  Global Economy Journal 14(1):57-78, 2014. 

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NAPA Career Profiles: Robert Winthrop

REAL WORLD ARCHIVES: columns on anthropology & public policy [under development]