David Stoll


David Stoll is an American anthropologist. In his book Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans, Stoll documents the contrast between the testimony of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú, to anthropologist Elizabeth Burgos in 1982, and how her neighbors and relatives remember their history. Stoll also criticized solidarity scholars for using Menchú's story to ignore other indigenous perspectives that do not fit their political agenda. The New York Times confirmed his findings about Menchú's personal history in a front-page story.
According to Mark Horowitz, William Yaworsky, and Kenneth Kickham, the controversy about Stoll's account of Menchu is one of the three most divisive episodes in recent american anthropological history, along with controversies about the truthfulness of Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa and Napoleon Chagnon's representation of violence among the Yanomami.
Stoll continues to carry out research in the Guatemalan highlands, most recently focusing on immigration, microcredit, and what he argues is a financial bubble created by the two. He teaches at Middlebury College.

Publications