Earl P. Scott

Dr. Scott is a Professor in the Department of Geography, Environment, and Society, at the University of Minnesota where he focuses on human landscape geography, economic development, and small scale enterprises in Africa and minority settlements in America with particular interest in the African diaspora. Grounded in foreign area research and social science survey methods, Dr. Scott’s objectives have been to understand the lives of “ordinary” people and how they advance their own well-being, to understand the participation of ordinary citizens in urban and rural-based economies and how their participation can be assured through democratic rights, and to understand how households and small-scale enterprises, as the lowest units of civil society, empower themselves. Dr. Scott has conducted field research on small-scale enterprises in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Uganda and has traveled to many other sub-Saharan African countries.