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Unioninkatu 35, Room 113, May 20th 2016, 2-4 p.m.
Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University
Basing his talk on fieldwork conducted at various times in 1974-81 on the island of Crete and in Bangkok between 2003 and the present, the speaker will explore ways in which “local people” not only defy state power but also generate alternatives to it in their everyday political practices. In part, the similarities stem from the fact that the two countries are clear instances of what the speaker has called “crypto-colonies.” In part, however, the experience of local communities in contesting the power of the state takes local forms that turn out to have surprisingly similar properties as well as widely divergent external forms. This talk will launch the speaker’s current investigation into the concept of “polity.”
Biographical Statement:
Michael Herzfeld is Ernest E. Monrad Professor of the Social Sciences in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University, where has taught since 1991. He is also IIAS Visiting Professor of Critical Heritage Studies at the University of Leiden (and Senior Advisor to the Critical Heritage Studies Initiative of the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden); Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne; and Visiting Professor and Chang Jiang (Yangtze River) Scholar at Shanghai International Studies University (2015-17). The author of eleven books — including Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State (1997; 3rd edition, 2016), The Body Impolitic: Artisans and Artifice in the Global Hierarchy of Value (2004), Evicted from Eternity: The Restructuring of Modern Rome (2009), and Siege of the Spirits: Community and Polity in Bangkok (2016) — and numerous articles and reviews, he has also produced two ethnographic films (Monti Moments [2007] and Roman Restaurant Rhythms [2011]). He has served as editor of American Ethnologist (1995-98) and is currently editor-at-large (responsible for “Polyglot Perspectives”) at Anthropological Quarterly. He is also a member of the editorial boards of several other journals, including International Journal of Heritage Studies, Anthropology Today, and South East Asia Research. An advocate for “engaged anthropology,” he has conducted research in Greece, Italy, and Thailand on, inter alia, the social and political impact of historic conservation and gentrification, the discourses and practices of crypto-colonialism, social poetics, the dynamics of nationalism and bureaucracy, and the ethnography of knowledge among artisans and intellectuals.