PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Bryan Moorefield, a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology, has been awarded the Eric R. Wolf Prize for his paper titled Exceptional Protections: Contracts, Temporality, and Mexican Guestworkers.

The Wolf Prize is a national award given annually by the Society for the Anthropology of Work, a section of the American Anthropological Association. The prize was established in 2003 and is awarded for the graduate paper that best demonstrates an anthropological approach to the study of work in the tradition of political economic scholarship modeled and encouraged by Eric Wolf. Students are invited to submit previously unpublished manuscripts for consideration.

As a recipient of the prize, Moorefield will have his essay published in the Anthropology of Work Review. Moorefield’s winning essay describes the hard work of Mexican guest workers who pick oranges in Florida, many of whom pick up to 900 pounds of oranges per hour. Moorefield looked at the limits of legal protections for these guest workers and discusses how these limits contribute to practices of overwork.