Setha M. Low (born March 14, 1948) is a former president of the American Anthropological Association, a professor in environmental psychology, and the director of the Public Space Research Group at the

City University of New York The City University of New York ( CUNY; , ) is the public university system of New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven senior colleges, seven community colleges and seven pr ...

. Low also served as a Conservation Guest Scholar at the Getty Conservation Institute. Low received a B.A. in Psychology from Pitzer College,

Claremont, California Claremont () is a suburban city on the eastern edge of Los Angeles County, California, United States, east of downtown Los Angeles. It is in the Pomona Valley, at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. As of the 2010 census it had a popu ...

in 1969 and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 1971 and 1976. Her recent research includes an ethnography of residents in gated communities in

San Antonio, Texas ("Cradle of Freedom") , image_map = , mapsize = 220px , map_caption = Interactive map of San Antonio , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1= State , subdivision_name1 = Texas , subdivision_t ...

and on Long Island and a study of urban parks with case studies including New York City's Prospect Park, Orchard Beach in

Pelham Bay Park Pelham Bay Park is a municipal park located in the northeast corner of the New York City borough of the Bronx. It is, at , the largest public park in New York City. The park is more than three times the size of Manhattan's Central Park. The pa ...

, and Jacob Riis Park in the Gateway National Recreation Area. More broadly Low's research includes work on the anthropology of space and place, medical anthropology, urban anthropology,

historic preservation Historic preservation (US), built heritage preservation or built heritage conservation (UK), is an endeavor that seeks to preserve, conserve and protect buildings, objects, landscapes or other artifacts of historical significance. It is a philos ...

, landscapes of fear, security/insecurity, and gating in Latin America, the United States, and the cities of Western Europe. Low grew up in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the wor ...

and currently resides in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Kings County is the most populous Administrative divisions of New York (state)#County, county in the State of New York, ...

Publications

* 2022 ''Why Public Space Matters''. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780197543733. * 2016 ''Spatializing Culture: The Ethnography of Space and Place''. New York and London: Routledge. * 2006 ''The Politics of Public Space'' ith co-editor Neil Smith New York and London: Routledge. * 2005 ''Rethinking Urban Parks: Public Space and Cultural Diversity''. University of Texas Press. * 2003 ''Behind the Gates: The New American Dream''. New York and London: Routledge. * 2003 ''The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture'' ith co-author Denise Lawrence-Zuñiga Oxford: Blackwell. * 2000 ''On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture''. Austin: University of Texas Press. * 1999 ''Theorizing the City: The New Urban Anthropology Reader''. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. * 1996 "Spatializing Culture: The Social Production and Social Construction of Public Space," ''American Ethnologist'' 23(4): 861–879. * 1995 ''Children of the Urban Poor: The Sociocultural Environment of Growth, Development and Malnutrition in Guatemala City'' ith co-author F. Johnston Boulder: Westview. * 1995 "Indigenous Architectural Representations: Mesoamerican and Caribbean Foundations of the Spanish American Plaza," ''American Anthropologist'' 97(4): 748–762.

References

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External links

Setha M. Low, Professor of Anthropology, The Graduate Center, CUNY
1948 births Living people American women anthropologists American anthropologists American psychologists American women psychologists Environmental psychologists 21st-century American women {{US-anthropologist-stub