Contact Information
382 Davenport Hall
607 S Mathews Ave.
M/C 148
Urbana, IL 61801
Office Hours
Grants
2026-2028 Research Grant, UIUC Campus Research Board. "The Social Life of Statistics: Making Aymara Count in Contemporary Bolivia" (RB26188) ($27,655)
2025-2030 Tinker Foundation Field Research Collaborative Program (funding graduate student research in Latin America through the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies), Co-PI with Katherine Szremski ($87,500)
Courses Taught
Spring 2026:
ANTH 411 "Research Methods of Sociocultural Anthropology"
ANTH 499 "Cultures of Counting: The Social Lives of Numbers"
Fall 2025:
ANTH 230 "Sociocultural Anthropology"
ANTH 279 "Economy, Business, and Society"
Fall 2024:
ANTH 103 "Anthropology in a Changing World"
ANTH 423 "Economic Anthropology"
Additional Campus Affiliations
Professor, Anthropology
Professor, Global Studies Programs and Courses
Professor, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Professor, Center for Global Studies
Acting Director, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (2024–2025)
External Links
Highlighted Publications
Orta, A. (2019). Making Global MBAs: The Culture of Business and the Business of Culture. (California Series in Public Anthropology; Vol. 47). University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvp2n2mb
Orta, A. (2024). Lessons of What Never Was: “Un-Justifying” Capitalism to Imagine Alternative Futures. In Ethical Economy (pp. 165-181). (Ethical Economy; Vol. 68). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58064-2_8
Orta, A. (2013). Managing the margins: MBA training, international business, and "the value chain of culture". American Ethnologist, 40(4), 689-703. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12048
Orta, A. (2013). Forged Communities and Vulgar Citizens: Autonomy and its Límites in Semineoliberal Bolivia. Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 18(1), 108-133. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1935-4940.2012.01249.x
Orta, A. (2004). Catechizing Culture: Missionaries, Aymara, and the "New Evangelization". Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/orta13068
Recent Publications
Orta, A. (2025). The Production of Management and the Disappearance of the Manager in MBA Education. In J. G. Carrier (Ed.), Unraveling Management: Its Institutions, Practices and Beliefs (pp. 33-54). Berghahn Books. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781805396949-003
Orta, A. (2024). Lessons of What Never Was: “Un-Justifying” Capitalism to Imagine Alternative Futures. In Ethical Economy (pp. 165-181). (Ethical Economy; Vol. 68). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58064-2_8
Orta, A. (2024). Lessons of What Never Was: `Un-justifying’ Capitalism to Imagine Alternative Futures. In M. Dion, & M. Pava (Eds.), Justifying Next Stage Capitalism: Exploring a Hopeful Future (pp. 165-181). (Ethical Economy: Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy; No. 68). Springer Nature.
Orta, A. (2021). Conversions and Convergences: Inculturation and Neoliberalism in Turn of the (Twenty-First-) Century Bolivia. In C. Büschges, A. Müller, & N. Oehri (Eds.), Liberation Theology and the Others: Contextualizing Catholic Activism in 20th Century Latin America (pp. 285-304). Rowman & Littlefield. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781666995121.ch14
Orta, A. (2020). Indigenous Christianities: Commensuration, (de)colonization, and cultural production in Latin America. In D. T. Orique O.P, S. Fitzpatrick-Behrens, & V. Garrard (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Latin American Christianity https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199860357.001.0001