YCAR External Research Associate
lmilgram[at]ocadu.ca
Professor Emerita and Adjunct Professor
Anthropology, OCAD University
Research Keywords:
Urban public space transformation; social entrepreneurship; informality; extralegality; information and communication technology (ICT)
Research Region(s):
Philippines
Research Diaspora(s):
B. Lynne Milgram is Professor Emerita and Adjunct Professor (Anthropology) at OCAD University, Toronto. Her SSHRC-supported research in the northern Philippines analyzes the cultural politics of social change regarding women’s work in crafts, the secondhand clothing trade, street and public market vending, and the Arabica coffee industry. In this regard, Milgram investigates issues in urban public space transformation, social entrepreneurship, informality, extralegality, and information and communication technology (ICT) regarding livelihood sustainability and food provisioning. Two specific ongoing projects include research on small-scale Philippine-Toronto grocery stores and prepared-food businesses, and Philippine-Canadian social entrepreneurs’ use ICT to market imported Philippine crafts online.
Milgram has co-edited five books, including (2013) Street Economies in the Urban Global South (K. T. Hansen, W. E. Little, B. L. Milgram, eds. Sante Fe, NM: School of Advanced Research Press), which won the 2014 Society of the Anthropology of Work, Book Award. Two recent publications include: (2021) “Social Entrepreneurship and Arabica Coffee Production in the Northern Philippines: Navigating Opportunities and Constraints,” Human Organization 80(1): 72–82; and (2021) (with L. Mendoza) “Repositioning the Edge: The Resilience of a Wholesale Vegetable Market in Benguet Northern Philippines.” In Norms and Illegality: Intimate Ethnographies and Politics, Cristiana Panella and Walter E. Little, eds., 137–159. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Her newest publication is "(Re)Crafting Digital Distribution Networks for Contemporary Philippine Textiles: Women’s Advocacy and Social Enterprise," a book chapter in Gendered Threads of Globalization: Fashion, Textiles, and Gender in the Long Twentieth Century, edited by Melia Belli (University of Manchester Press 2024).