Varisco attended Wheaton College (Illinois), where he majored in Biblical Archaeology under the advisement of Prof. Al Hoerth.
At the University of Pennsylvania he obtained his Ph.D. in 1982: "The Adaptive Dynamics of Water Allocation in al-Ahjur, Yemen Arab Republic," the result of ethnographic fieldwork during 1978-79 in a central highland valley of the Yemen Arab Republic on the ecology of irrigation and water resource use.
Varisco is the recipient of the NDFL for Arabic, as well as grants from the American Research Center in Egypt, NEH and Fulbright fellowships.
Varisco arrived in Yemen in early 1978 to begin 18 months of ethnographic and ecological research in the highland valley of al-Ahjur along with fellow anthropologist and wife, Najwa Adra.
King on an NEH-sponsored project on Islamic Folk Astronomy took him back to Yemen to work on the 13th century almanac of al-Malik al-Ashraf 'Umar, which he edited and translated in 1994.
Involved with the American Institute for Yemeni Studies since its inception in 1977, Varisco has spoken at the institute on a number of research topics, as well as lectures in Arabic at Sanaa University, the Yemen Center for Research and Studies and Yemen's Ministry of Agriculture.
In addition to his field research and examination of Yemeni agricultural texts, he has published on the social history of qât and coffee in Yemen, the tribal concept, the rhino horn issue, folk literature, land use, folk astronomy, indigenous plant protection methods, sailing seasons out of Aden, and the ethnography of Yemen.
With historian G. Rex Smith, he published a facsimile edition of The Manuscript of al-Malik al-Afdal: al-'Abbâs b.
Based on primary research in Cairo, he published "The Origin of the Anwa' in Arab Tradition" in Studia Islamica (74:5-28, 1991), presenting the theory that the origin of the lunar station (manazil al-qamar) concept in Arab tradition was an Islamic mixing of the zodiacal grid from India with indigenous pre-Islamic Arab folk calendars and that the system of 28 distinct markers did not exist in Arabia prior to Islam, despite the claims of later Muslim scholars.
The book examines Islam Observed in the light criticism of Geertz’s approach to the anthropology of religion as a cultural system.
Gellner’s use of Hume, Weber and Ibn Khaldun to explain the development of Islam is addressed by going back to these original sources.
Mernissi’s Beyond the Veil is compared with early Orientalist and Arabic texts by tracing how each discusses the case of Muhammad’s marriage to his adopted son’s wife, Zaynab, a popular trope in Christian apologetic criticism of Islam in the medieval period.
Like Geertz and Gellner, Mernissi is said to contribute to an essentialized ideal of Islam in which homogenized generalities substitute for the diverse behavior of Muslims in specific localities.
The book's epilogue builds on what anthropologists have learned in the past half century by observing Muslims; following the textual critique this is offered as a prolegomenon to future anthropological study within Islamic contexts and more effective sharing of ethnographic analysis with scholars outside the discipline.
The research for this study includes a comprehensive search for all the major reviews of Orientalism and relevant commentaries in journal articles, books and edited volumes.
The points made in Orientalism are contextualized with earlier and later texts written by Said, as well as his many published interviews.
In 2006 Varisco launched CyberOrient, an online journal devoted to representation of Islam and the Middle East in cyberspace and the impact of the Internet.
Their involvement with the Internet demands a reflexivity that goes beyond musing over the mutant prospect of becoming cyborgs to assessing an evolving recombination of humans, technology and information.
The range of issues covered in these assignments include: Agricultural Sector Analysis, Biodiversity and Environmental Impact Assessment, Community Participation, Evaluation, Household Survey, Integrated Pest Management, Irrigation, Participant Training, Participatory Rural Assessment, Project Design, Resettlement issues, Scoping, Social Soundness Analysis, Sustainable Livelihoods Analysis, and Water Supply and Sanitation.
The current writers include Jon Anderson, Magnus Bernhardsson, miriam cooke, El Sayed El Aswad, George el-Hage, McGuire Gibson, Amir Hussain, Bruce Lawrence, Ronald Lukens-Bull, Gabriele Marranci, Gregory Starrett and Daniel Martin Varisco.
In Michel Conan and W. John Kress, editors, Botanical Progress, Horticultural Innovations and Cultural Changes, 239-256.
2004 The Elixer of Life or the Devil's Cud: The Debate over Qat (Catha edulis) in Yemeni Culture.
In Ross Coomber and Nigel South, editors, Drug Use and Cultural Context: Tradition, Change and Intoxicants beyond 'The West' , 101-118.
2002 The Archaeologist's Spade and the Apologist's Stacked Deck: The Near East through Conservative Christian Bibliolatry.
In Abbas Amanat and Magnus T. Bernhardsson, editors, The United States & the Middle East: Cultural Encounters, 57-116.
1995 The Astrological Significance of the Lunar Stations in the 13th Century Rasulid Text of al-Malik al-Ashraf, Quaderni di Studi Arabi 13:19-40.
1993 Texts and Pretexts: The Unity of the Rasulid State in the Reign of al-Malik al-Muzaffar, Revue du Monde Musulman et de la Méditerranée 67(1):13-21.
1991 A Royal Crop Register from Rasulid Yemen, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 34:1-22.
In Anthropology and Development in North Africa and the Middle East, M. Salem Murdock and M. Horowitz, editors, pp. 292–311.
1986 On the Meaning of Chewing: The Significance of Qât (Catha edulis) in the Yemen Arab Republic.