Julie Stewart Assistant Professor 325 BEH S 801-581-7876 julie.stewart@soc.utah.edu VITA

Ph.D.  New York University  2006
M.A.  New York University  2003
M.A.  Tulane University  1999 (Latin American Studies)
B.A.  Cornell University  1993 

My research draws principally from the sociology of development and social movement theory, exploring such concepts as collective identity, social capital, movement outcomes and community-driven development. More specifically, my work focuses on rural communities in post-war Guatemala and how relationships formed during the war with international actors have produced divergent outcomes in the material, social, cultural and political realms. I argue that the war produced opportunities for community development by providing refugees with new resources, relationships and experiences that were utilized during the post-war recovery period. However, some communities were better-positioned to use these resources, depending on their levels of internal solidarity and the nature of local-transnational links that had formed historically. While these findings are specific to Guatemala, my broader research agenda compares the differential community experiences of post-war transitions in other Central American countries. Further, in the context of globalization, I focus on displacement and the refugee experience as both a consequence of and a property of globalization. The divergent individual and community trajectories that result from war-time displacement demonstrate the highly uneven properties of this dynamic process.