Sarah Lyon
- Associate Professor
- Interim Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, College of Arts and Sciences
- Director of Graduate Studies, Anthropology
- Anthropology
- Gender and Women's Studies
- Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies
- political economy
- development
- Latin America
- labor
- Political Ecology
- ethical consumption
- fair trade
- coffee
- gender and development
Ph.D. Emory University
B.A. Smith College
My work is situated at the juncture of development studies, economic anthropology and food studies. I am particularly interested in how alternative food networks such as fair trade work to create and sustain diverse economies in the United States and Latin America.
In addition to serving as Interim Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, I direct the College of Arts and Sciences NEH funded Careers Beyond the Professoriate program which provides resources and support to humanities and social science PhD students at the University of Kentucky who are interested in exploring diverse career paths.
My current research, funded by the National Science Foundation,explores how changing labor practices, economic relations, and discourses surrounding marketable coffee qualities (e.g., organic, fairtrade) within global value chains affect cooperatives and communities. Specifically, we are investigating how these changing practices shape the gendered conditions of women's coffee production in Oaxaca, Mexico and struggles for gender equity across the value chain.
My past research explored the nature of producer and consumer relations in certified commodity networks and questioned the promise that fair trade and other consumption based development initiatives hold for agricultural smallholders in developing countries. Fair trade is a form of alternative trade that seeks to improve the position of disempowered small-scale producers through trade as a means of development. The movement, which promotes labeling, certification, and consumer action, rejects the narrow view of third world producers as victims and instead emphasizes the role that northern consumption can play in their economic empowerment and well-being. My book, Coffee and Community: Maya Farmers and Fair Trade Markets (University Press of Colorado, 2011), makes a critical contribution to economic anthropology by providing important insights into how exchange is vested in social relations and inequities in a globalizing world.
Student Research Opportunities
I believe strongly that the best way to learn about anthropology is to actually become an anthropologist. Therefore, I welcome opportunities to work with interested undergraduate students on independent research projects. If you are interested in collaborating or are looking for a research mentor please contact me.
Courses Taught
- ANT 101: Introduction to Anthropology
- ANT 245: Food, Culture, and Society
- ANT 301: History of Anthropological Thought
- ANT 311: Anthropological Perspectives on Globalization
- ANT 324: Contemporary Cultures of Latin America
- ANT 338: Economic Anthropology
- ANT 352: Business, Culture, and Society
- ANT 352: Anthropology of Tourism
- ANT 582: Public Anthropology - Senior Seminar
- ANT 601: Contemporary Theory
- ANT 610: History of Anthropological Theory
- ANT 734: Economic Anthropology
- ANT 770: Globalization
- ANT 770: Culture and Power in Latin America
BOOKS
- 2012 Lyon, S. and E.C. Wells, eds. Global Tourism: Cultural Heritage and Economic Encounters. New York: Alta Mira Press.
- 2011 Coffee and Community: Maya Farmers and Fair Trade Markets. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. [Winner of the Society for Economic Anthropology's Book Prize]
- 2010 Lyon, S. and M. Moberg, eds. Fair Trade and Social Justice: Global Ethnographies. New York: New York University Press.
JOURNAL ARTICLES
- 2019 Lyon, S., T. Mutersbaugh, and H. Worthen. Constructing the Female Coffee Farmer: Do Corporate Smart Economic Initiatives Promote Gender Equity within Agricultural Value Chains? Economic Anthropology 6(1).
- 2018 Lyon, S. Coping with Coffee Rust in Oaxaca, Mexico: Vulnerability and The Impact of Fair Trade on Smallholders' Adaptive Capacity. Research in Economic Anthropology 38:79-101.
- 2018 Lyon, S. The Work of Anthropology Reconsidered: Career Diversity and the Future of Doctoral Education. Anthropology of Work Review 39(1):26-39.
- 2016 Lyon, S., T. Mutersbaugh, and H. Worthen. The Triple Burden: The Impact of Time Poverty on Women's Participation in Coffee Producer Organizational Governance in Mexico. Agriculture and Human Values.
- 2015 Lyon, S. The Hidden Labor of Fair Trade. Labor. Working Class History of the Americas 12(1-2): 159-176.
- 2015 Venter, M. and S. Lyon. Configuring and Commoditizing the Archaeological Landscape: Heritage, Identity and Tourism in the Tuxtla Mountains. Archaeology Papers of the American Anthropology Association 25(1):74-82.
- 2014 Lyon, S. The GoodGuide to "Good Coffee". Gastronomica 14(4): 60-69.
- 2014 Lyon, S. Fair Trade Towns USA: Growing the Market within a Diverse Economy. Journal of Political Ecology 21:145-160.
- 2014 Lyon, S., S. Ailshire and A. Sehon. Fair Trade Consumption and The Limits to Solidarity. Human Organization 73(2): 141-152.
- 2013 Lyon, S. Coffee Tourism in Chiapas: Recasting Colonial Narratives for Contemporary Markets. Culture, Agriculture, Food and the Environment 35(2): 125-139.
- 2013 Lyon, S. Coffee Tourism and Community Development in Guatemala. Human Organization 72(3): 188-198.
- 2010 Lyon, S., J. Aranda and T. Mutersbaugh. Gender and Governanace in Fairtrade-Organic Coffee. Geo-Forum 41(1): 93-103.
- 2010 Lyon, S. What Good Will Two More Trees Do? The Political Economy of Sustainable Coffee Certification, Local Livelihoods and Maya Identities. Landscape Research 34(2): 223-240.
- 2008 We Want to Be Equal to Them: Fair Trade Coffee Certification and Gender Equity within Organizations. Human Organization 68(3):258-268.
- 2007 Maya Coffee Farmers and the Fair Trade Commodity Chain. Culture and Agriculture 29(2): 100-112.
- 2007 Fair Trade Coffee and Human Rights in Guatemala. Journal of Consumer Policy 30(3): 241-261.
- 2006 Evaluating Fair Trade Consumption: Politics, Defetishization, and Producer Participation. International Journal of Consumer Studies 30(5): 452-465.
- 2006 Migratory Imaginations: The Commodification and Contradictions of Shade Grown Coffee. Social Anthropology 14(3): 1-14.
BOOK CHAPTERS
- 2018 Lyon, S. Digital Connections: Coffee, Agency, and Unequal Platforms. In Digital Food Activism. Schneider, Tanja, et al., eds. Pp. 70-88. New York: Routledge.
- 2017 Lyon, S. Economics. In Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology. Brown, Nina, et al, eds. Pp. 1-27. Wasington DC: American Anthropological Association.
- 2015 Lyon, S. Fair Trade and Indigenous Communities in Latin America. In Handbook of Research on Fair Trade. Raynolds, Laura and Elizabeth Bennett, eds. Edward Elgar.
- 2012 Lyon, S. “Here The Campesino is Dead”: Can Central America’s Smallholders Be Saved? In Central America and the New Millennium: Living Transition and Reimagining Democracy. Moodie, Ellen and Jennifer Burrell, eds. Pp. 196-211. New York: Berghan Books.
- 2012 Lyon, S. and C. Wells. Ethnographies of Global Tourism: Cultural Heritage, Economic Encounters, and the Redefinition of Impact. In Global Tourism: Cultural Heritage and Economic Encounters. Lyon, S. and E. Christian Wells, eds. Pp. 1-20. Walnut Creek: CA: Alta Mira Press.
- 2010 Lyon, S. A Market of Our Own: Women’s Livelihoods and Fair Trade Coffee Markets. In Fair Trade and Social Justice: Global Ethnographies. Lyon, S. and M. Moberg, eds. Pp. 125-146. New York: New York University Press.
- 2010 Lyon, S. and M. Moberg. What’s Fair? The Paradox of Seeking Justice through Markets. In Fair Trade and Social Justice: Global Ethnographies. Lyon, S. and M. Moberg, eds. Pp. 1-24. New York: New York University Press.
- 2006 Just Java: Roasting Fair Trade Coffee. In, Fast Food-Slow Food: The Economic Anthropology of the Global Food System. Wilk, R., ed. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.
Please see: http://uky.academia.edu/SarahLyon for a complete list.
- Associate Professor
- Interim Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, College of Arts and Sciences
- Director of Graduate Studies, Anthropology
- Anthropology
- Gender and Women's Studies
- Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies
