Shelton H. Davis

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Shelton H. Davis was a Sector Manager in the Social Development Unit, Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development, Latin America and Caribbean Region (LCSES) at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. where he was responsible for the Bank's work on social development, including tribal and indigenous peoples, civil society, resettlement, etc. He was Principal Sociologist in the Social Development Department from its creation in 1997 to August 1998. Between 1991 and 1997, he served as Principal Sociologist in the World Bank's central Environment Department; and before this, he worked in the Latin America and Caribbean Region's Environment Division.

Between 1984 and 1986, he was a visiting scholar at the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights where he conducted a study of international mechanisms for protecting the human rights of forest-dwelling Indian populations in lowland South America. He was also the founder and director of a hemispheric Indian documentation center called Indigena, Inc. in Berkeley, California (1973 1975), and the Anthropology Resource Center in Boston, Massachusetts (1975 1984).

He has written extensively on indigenous peoples, environment and development issues in Latin America, and his book Victims of the Miracle: Development and the Indians of Brazil (Cambridge University Press, 1977) is considered a classic in the field. He is also the author of Land Rights and Indigenous Peoples: The Role of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (Cultural Survival, 1988); and the editor of Indigenous Views of Land and Environment (The World Bank, 1993) and, Traditional Knowledge and Sustainable Development (The World Bank, 1995).

Dr. Davis has taught at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Harvard University, University of California, Berkeley, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University, Clark University, the University of Massachusetts and most recently at Georgetown University.

He received his undergraduate degree in Sociology and Anthropology at Antioch College (1965) and his Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from Harvard University (1970). He also did special studies in Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science (1963 and 1964), and doctoral research among Mayan Indians in Guatemala (1967 1969).