Devon G. Peña

Dr Devon Gerardo Peña (born 1954 in Santa Monica, California) is an American Latino professor of anthropology and ethnic studies and an activist in the environmental justice movement.

Education

Peña grew up on the US-Mexico border in Laredo, Texas. He gained a PhD in sociology from the University of Texas in Austin in 1983.

Career

His book "The Terror of the Machine: Technology, Work, Gender, and Ecology on the U.S.-Mexico Border" won the "1998 Outstanding Academic Book" award of "Choice Magazine" and the American Library Association. The book is a study of women workers and their struggles against capitalism and environmental destruction in the maquiladora industry of Juarez, Mexico.

Since 1999, he has held an academic appointment as professor of anthropology and American ethnic studies at the University of Washington where he is affiliated with the graduate program in environmental anthropology. At the same time he is adjunct professor with women's studies, the Center for Water and Watershed Studies, Latin American studies, Program on the Environment, and the Institute for Public Health Genetics.

At the same time he has been a public policy advocate and environmental justice activist in Latina/o communities. He was a delegate at the first Environmental Justice Summit in 1991 and participated in the drafting of the Principles of Environmental Justice. More recently, he served as a member of the Executive Committee for the second Environmental Justice Summit in 2002. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Council for Responsible Genetics between 1991 and 2002 and was involved in the areas of commercial agricultural biotechnology, environmental risk assessment and genomics, and trade-related intellectual property (the “No Patents on Life” campaign).

He is a founding member of a non-profit foundation, The Acequia Institute, which is based at the family’s acequia farm in Colorado. The mission of The Acequia Institute is to support and promote sustainable agriculture with social justice in rural and urban Latina/o communities.

Publications

Authored books

*"Mexican Americans and the Environment: Tierra y Vida". University of Arizona Press. (2005) ISBN 9780816522118
*"The Terror of the Machine: Technology, Work, Gender, and Ecology on the U.S.-Mexico Border" (1998). ISBN 9780585234373
*"Chicano Culture, Ecology, Politics: Subversive Kin" (1998). ISBN 9780816518739

Book series editorships

*Co-editor of a new book series, "Culture, Place, and Nature: Studies in Anthropology and Environment", University of Washington Press.
*Senior Editor, "Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States". 4 Volumes. New York: Oxford University Press. (2005)

Edited books

*"Voces de aqua y tierra: Four Hundred Years of Acequia Farming in the Rio Arriba, 1598-1998" (forthcoming). This edited volume is based on cooperative research with traditional Chicano farmers and is the product of a five-year interdisciplinary study funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Colorado Historical Society, and the Ford Foundation.

Book chapters

*"Autonomy, equity, and environmental justice." in "Power, Justice, and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement", eds. David N. Pellow and Robert J. Brulle. Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 131-52.(2005)
*"Tierra y vida: Chicano environmental justice struggles in the Southwest. in "The Quest for Environmental Justice: Human Rights and the Politics of Pollution", ed. Robert D. Bullard, pp. 188-208. (2005)
*“The Watershed Commonwealth of the Upper Rio Grande.” in "Natural Assets: Democratizing Environmental Ownership," James K. Boyce and Barry G. Shelley (editors). Washington, D.C.: Island Press, pp. 169-85. (2003)
*“Identity, Place, and Communities of Resistance.” in "Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World," Julian Ageyman, Robert D. Bullard, and Bob Evans (editors), London: Earthscan. (2003)

cholarly articles

*"Community Acequias in Colorado's Rio Culebra Watershed: A Customary Commons in the Domain of Prior Appropriation," "University of Colorado Law Review" 74: 101-95. Co-authored with Greg Hicks. (July 2003)
*“The Scope of Latina/o Environmental Studies,” "Latino Studies" 1:47-78 (March 2003)
*“Joseph C. Gallegos: Tierra y vida.” "Orion Magazine" (Jan-Feb): 75-6. (2003)