AJ Faas is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at San Jose State University. His work focuses on exchange practices, social organization, organizational practice, and epistemology in contexts of environmental crisis--disasters, displacement and resettlement, development, and violent conflict.. His has principally conducted research in Mexico and Ecuador, but also in the United States and China. He is a founding member of the Risk and Disasters Topical Interest Group at the Society for Applied Anthropology, where he has organized more than 200 panels on the applied social science of risk, hazards, and disasters.