Jeffrey Burnette Headshot

Jeffrey Burnette

Associate Professor

Department of Sociology and Anthropology
College of Liberal Arts

585-475-2807
Office Location

Jeffrey Burnette

Associate Professor

Department of Sociology and Anthropology
College of Liberal Arts

Education

BA, State University of Albany; MA, Ph.D., State University of New York at Buffalo

Bio

Jeffrey Burnette is an assistant professor in the department of sociology and anthropology at Rochester Institute of Technology. His research is interested in understanding the relationship between education, inequality and the quantification of American Indian and Alaska Native identity.  A primary focus of his work concerns representation in federal datasets and issues related to data disaggregation.  He received his Ph.D. in economics from the State University of New York University (SUNY) at Buffalo in 2005 and a Bachelor of Arts in economics from the SUNY at Albany.

585-475-2807

Personal Links

Select Scholarship

Invited Article/Publication
Burnette, Jeffrey D. and Matthew T. Gregg. "How Much Did Native American Life Expectancy Drop During COVID?" ECONOFACT. (2023). Web.
Burnette, Jeffrey D. "Marginalization of Indigenous People in Education Data Produces a False Narrative." The Minority Report. The Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession 2022 Issue 14: 1, 10-13. (2022). Web.
Burnette, Jeffrey D. "Equal Pay Day and Data Equality for Native American Women." Washington Center for Equitable Growth. (2018). Web.
Journal Paper
McCoy, Meredith L. and Jeffrey D. Burnette. "An Exploratory Analysis of Elementary and Secondary Education Funding Levels for American Indians and Alaska Natives from 1980 to 2017." Journal of Education Finance 48. 2 (2022): 138-165. Print.
Burnette, Jeffrey D. "Why Is the Total Enrollment of American Indian and Alaska Native Precollegiates Such a Difficult Number to Find?" Journal of American Indian Education Vol. 60. No. 1-2 (2021): 162-186. Print.
Burnette, Jeffrey D., Jason T. Younker, and David P. Wick. "Statistical Termination or Fewer Self-Identified Students: What Is Causing the Decline in American Indian and Alaska Native College Enrollments?" Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy 4. 4 (2021): 162-186. Print.
Burnette, Jeffrey D. and Weiwei Zhang. "Distributional Differences and the Native American Gender Wage Gap." Economies 7. 2 (2019): 46. Web.
Burnette, Jeffrey D. "Inequality in the Labor Market for Native American Women and the Great Recession." American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings 107. 7 (2017): 425-429. Print.

Currently Teaching

ANTH-260
3 Credits
This course examines the persistence and change in Native American cultures using archaeological, ethnohistorical, socioeconomic, ethnographic, linguistic, and autobiographical sources among others. In addition to broad regional and historical coverage, we will read about and discuss culture change, colonialism, federal law, gender, race, and places in Native American contexts. Our goal is to understand the lived experiences of Indian people and the many forces that shape Native American lives.
ANTH-265
3 Credits
This course will examine the parallels of anthropological works and resulting government policies in the late-19th and 20th centuries as they relate to the genre of Native Americans film, both popular and ethnographic works. In addition, an extensive regional and historical literature review will complement the possible films.
ANTH-303
3 Credits
The research conducted by sociologists and anthropologists generates large, complex data sets that are difficult to interpret subjectively. We will explore the basic quantitative tools that sociologists and anthropologists can use to understand these data sets and learn how to craft a research question and research design that utilize quantitative data, how to select appropriate quantitative techniques and apply them, how to present results, and how to critically evaluate quantitatively based knowledge claims.
ANTH-361
3 Credits
Much of the knowledge of our social worlds has been digitized. This course explores how social technologies shape our relationships, personal lives, and sense of self. The metric manufacture of diversity has produced new forms of population management and inequality. Our biographic histories as citizens, consumers, workers/professionals, parents, lovers, and social media users are collected as data-bites and assessed in metric terms, thereby forging new sets of identities. The transformation of people into numerical entities is an act of statistical objectification. This process frames the creation of social and racial typologies, and is well demonstrated by the US census. Students will investigate the formation of racial, ethnic, and gender identities in the context of the accelerated desire to digitize humanity.
ANTH-375
3 Credits
There is a great cultural, and linguistic diversity among Native American Indigenous Nations and their approach to managing cultural and natural resources. This course will explore this diversity in addition to the various ways Indigenous nations have maintained and exerted their sovereignty. This will be done in one of three distinct topics: 1). American Indian Sovereignty - an examination of the historical and political foundations of Indigenous sovereignty and its current expressions; 2). Indigenous Economics and Economies - a contrasting of Indigenous approaches for building and maintaining sustainable economies with non-Indigenous ones combined with the use of economic methods to understand the impact of settler colonialism and capitalism on Indigenous economies; or 3). Native American Languages - an examination of: the structure and origin of Indigenous languages; the events that have led many Indigenous languages to be endangered; and the efforts to revitalize Indigenous languages. For clarification purposes: American Indian is used to refer to Indigenous people residing within the boundaries of the continental United States; Native American broadens this definition to include all Indigenous people residing in either North or South America; while Indigenous is the most broadly defined. Indigenous includes all people who identify with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies who consider themselves distinct from the societies now prevailing on those territories both within and outside the Americas.
SOCI-102
3 Credits
Sociology is the study of the social world and socialization processes. Sociologists study the broader picture of how societies are structured and organized through a macro-sociological analysis as well as how individuals create their own social reality symbolically through their interactions with others in a micro-sociological analysis. Students in this course will learn the fundamentals of each approach and come away with a sociological framework which they can critically apply to their own lives.
SOCI-303
3 Credits
The research conducted by sociologists and anthropologists generates large, complex data sets that are difficult to interpret subjectively. We will explore the basic quantitative tools that sociologists and anthropologists can use to understand these data sets and learn how to craft a research question and research design that utilize quantitative data, how to select appropriate quantitative techniques and apply them, how to present results, and how to critically evaluate quantitatively based knowledge claims.
SOCI-361
3 Credits
Much of the knowledge of our social worlds has been digitized. This course explores how social technologies shape our relationships, personal lives, and sense of self. The metric manufacture of diversity has produced new forms of population management and inequality. Our biographic histories as citizens, consumers, workers/professionals, parents, lovers, and social media users are collected as data-bites and assessed in metric terms, thereby forging new sets of identities. The transformation of people into numerical entities is an act of statistical objectification. This process frames the creation of social and racial typologies, and is well demonstrated by the US census. Students will investigate the formation of racial, ethnic, and gender identities in the context of the accelerated desire to digitize humanity.