James Andrew Whitaker

James Andrew Whitaker is a social anthropologist whose research primarily centers around the ethnology and ethnohistory of lowland South America with a focus on the Makushi and Akawaio people in Brazil and Guyana. He is an assistant professor of anthropology at Troy University and an honorary research fellow at the University of St Andrews. He completed a PhD in anthropology at Tulane University and a postdoctoral fellowship with the CNRS through LEEISA in French Guiana (MOPGA, 2021-2022). He was a visiting scholar at the University of Helsinki (2022). He is the author of The Shamanism of Eco-Tourism: History and Ontology among the Makushi in Guyana (Cambridge University Press, 2024). Among other publications, he is co-editor of several volumes, including Alliances and Partnerships in Lowland South America (University of Arizona Press, 2025), Sorcery in Amazonia: A Comparative Exploration of Magical Assault (Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, 2024), and Climatic and Ecological Change in the Americas: A Perspective from Historical Ecology (Routledge, 2023). He is currently working on a second monograph focused on historical relations among the Makushi.