Miguel Centellas
Instructional Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology
Phone Number: (662)916-3605
Email: mcentell@olemiss.edu
http://socanth.olemiss.edu/miguel-centellas/

Key Words:

Research Description:

My interest in Bolivian politics is perhaps natural. Born in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, during the last years of the Banzer dictatorship, most of my life coincided with Bolivia’s democratization process. Yet I saw most of this from afar: My family immigrated to Saginaw, Michigan, when I was almost ten. But during periodic visits back, I was fascinated by the social changes brought on by democracy (and neoliberal economic reforms).

I received a B.S. degree from Central Michigan University in 1997, with dual majors in Political Science and History with a minor in Latin American Studies. I went on to earn a Ph.D. in Political Science from Western Michigan University in 2007. I was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for dissertation fieldwork in Bolivia in 2003. I arrived in Bolivia to do my fieldwork in September 2003, just as the “gas war” that toppled then-president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was escalating. During the following ten months, I witnessed radical and rapid political and social changes that forced me to revise my entire dissertation project.

Although my PhD is in comparative politics, I trained broadly in political sociology. My dissertation analyzed Bolivia’s unexpected political stability in the 1980s and 1990s (compared to its Andean neighbors Ecuador and Peru), and how reforms aimed at improving democratic governance contributed to a cycle of instability in the early 2000s that eventually led to the 2005 election of Evo Morales, the country’s first indigenous president. Since then, my research uses the Bolivian case to explore the relationship between democratization and political identity at the subnational level, and the role played by institutional and socioeconomic factors in that relationship. Overall, my work seeks to explore not only how democracies “work” (the kratos question), but also how political communities are established (the demos question).

Although my expertise is in Bolivian politics, my interests extend beyond Latin America. In a paper in Political Analysis, my co-author Mihaiela Gugiu and I critique a number of democracy scores commonly used in cross-national research. Using a sample of 63 countries in Latin America and Europe across three decades, we established that existing democracy scores vary significantly and are only able to distinguish between democracies and non-democracies: they could not credibly evaluate different levels of democratic quality.

Additionally, I am interested in the craft of social science education. I have presented papers and offered workshops on how to integrate research methodology training into “content” courses, and have published research on the pedagogical value of simulations and critical writing exercises. My recent interest is in developing assessment tools to evaluate the impact of social science curricula on the development of “soft skills” and behaviors or attitudes (such as social capital and efficacy) among students.

Honors Theses:

Wetherton, Kelly (2023) Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Football: Exploring the Construction of Ethnic Identities and Their Manifestations for Athletic Club Bilbao and Celtic Football Club (full text)

Overton, Calley Celeste (2022) Church State Relations: Religiopolitics in Chile and Uruguay in the 21st Century (full text)

Cooley, Jess Elisha (2022) To Be or Not to Be: An Assessment of Latin American Airport Infrastructure and the Creation of An Airport Infrastructure Index (full text)

Reed, Anna Scout (2022) Panda Diplomacy: China's Use of Soft Power to Influence the World (full text)

Ferrell, Anna Kate (2021) Mam?s Trabajadoras: An Evaluation of Policies that Incite Maternal Participation in the Labor Force in Spain and the European Union (full text)

Burleson, Bailey (2021) Support for Regionalist and Nationalist Political Parties in Spain (full text)

Bradford, William (2021) The Ceibalitas in Uruguay: How Digital Educational Technology affects Social Cohesion (full text)

Manivannan, Swetha (2021) Exploring the Global Rise of Ethnoreligious Nationalism: A Case Study of Vox in Spain and the Bharatiya Janata Party in India (full text)

White, Jenna (2020) Success and Failure of Indigenous Social Movements: a Comparative Case Study of Ecuador and Chile (full text)

Melvin, Olivia (2020) Clarifying the Conceptualization of Empire: Is China's Belt and Road Initiative an Attempt at Empire? (full text)

Geist, Erin (2020) Immigrants: A Threat to the Economy or Cultural Identity? A Case Study of Haitian and Venezuelan Immigrants in Chile (full text)

Ruggiero IV, George (2020) Nationalism Beyond a Nation: Non-Iberian Spanish Nationalism Examined (full text)

Herring, Zac (2019) Economic Advancement Across the European Playing Field (full text)

Russell, Jessika Brittni (2019) Religion in Education: The Effects of Political Ideologies on Andalusian Youth (full text)

Brown, Sydney Elizabeth (2018) Spain's Rapid Transition: A Case Study of Late Modernization (full text)

Gagliano, Natalie (2018) Mujeres Modernizadas: Defining the Implications of Modernization for Basque Working Women (full text)

Romary, Elizabeth (2017) From a Tweet to the Street: The Effect of Social Media on Social Movement Theory. (full text)

Kern, Jenny (2017) ETA in Spain: Explaining Basque Violence. (full text)

Arrington, Hannah (2016) Tortoise and the Hare: A Case Study of Quota Laws and Women's Representation in Congress in Argentina and the United States. (full text)

Abunemeh, Samira (2014) The Success of an Ethnic Political Party: A Case Study of Arab Political Parties in Israel. (full text)

Taylor, Courtney Gayle (2014) Festivals and Revelry: a Study of Identity in the Cantons of Modern Switzerland. (full text)

Hamilton, Robert Finney (2012) "Support for Democracy: An Explanation of Its Development Through Its Institutions"

Weiss, Shantala Fabiola (2012) "Correlating Taxation And Income Inequality: An Interregional Study"

Cummins, Leigh Hanlon (2011) "From Riches to Rags: An Analysis of Argentina's Uneven Development from 1880 through 2010"

Bateman, Joseph Merrill (2010) "Conflict in the Peruvian Amazon: A Study of Political Protest in Bagua"