His research and teaching interests focus on political anthropology and inequality, media and documentary film, Indigenous rights, law and policy, environmental change and ethnographic writing. He is the author of Behold the Black Caiman: a Chronicle of Ayoreo Life (University of Chicago Press), winner of the Gregory Bateson Prize, co-editor of Radio Fields: Anthropology and Wireless Sound in the 21st Century, and the director of the documentary films Asking Ayahai: an Ayoreo Sotry, From Honey to Ashes, and Farewell to Savage.