He has conducted extensive archival and ethnographic research in Mexico, focused principally on Maya-speaking areas of western Yucatán. In publications based on that research, such as In the Name of El Pueblo: Place, Community and the Politics of History in Yucatán (Duke, 2010), he has explored diverse topics, such as: land and labor, value, and commodities; education, revolution and state formation; indigeneity, mestizaje and the politics of translation; and the construction of archives and the workings of historical memory. Eiss has edited three collections of articles that place such issues into comparative perspective: most recently Mestizo Acts: The Politics and Performance of Mestizaje in Guatemala, Mexico, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia (Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 2016, in press).