Fall 2023
Monday, September 18
Prof. Stefanie Graeter, University of Arizona
Topic: TBD
12:30 - 14:30 PETH 108
Monday, October 2
Prof. Christina Halperin, Universite de Montreal
Topic: TBD
12:30 - 14:30 PETH 116
Thursday, October 19
Prof. Aldon Morris,听Northwestern University
Topic: TBD
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Winter 2022
Monday, February 21
Prof. Susan Lepselter,听Indiana University
Topic:听鈥淟eft Standing鈥 鈥 A Performance of written and video ethnographic poetics.
12:30 - 14:30 Online
Monday, March 28
Prof.听Natacha Nsabimana, University of Chicago
Topic: "Reburying the Dead of 1994 and Rethinking Historic Time in Rwanda鈥
12:30 - 14:30 Online
Monday, April 11
Jasmine Pisapia, Gr茅goire Hervouet-Zeiber, Marina Alamo Bryan (平特五不中, Columbia University)
Topic:听Anthropology Speakers Series Roundtable
12:30 - 14:30 Online
Fall 2021
Friday, September 24
Prof. Eldon Yellowhorn, Simon Fraser University
Topic: Finding Indigenous Children: Forensic Anthropology and Restorative Justice
12:30 - 14:30 Online
Monday, October 18
Prof. Andrew Martindale, University of East Anglia
Topic: Quantifying Uncertainty: The Challenges Using Ground-penetrating Radar to Identify Unmarked Graves in Residential School Contexts
12:30 - 14:30 Online
Monday, October 25
Prof. Hiba Bou Akar, Columbia University
Topic: Sedimented Futures: On Housing and War Displacement in Beirut, Lebanon
12:30 - 14:30 Online
Monday, November 8
Prof. Marco Motta, Institute of Ethnology, University of Neuch芒tel
Topic: The Bewitchment of our Intelligence: Skepticism about Other Minds in Anthropology
12:30 - 14:30听听 PETH 116 & Online
Monday, November 15
Prof. Kisha Supernant, University of Alberta
Topic: Uncovering the Past, Creating the Future: The Role of Archaeology in Restorative Justice in Canada
12:30 - 14:30 PETH 116 & Online
Winter 2021
Friday January 29
Prof. Valentina Napolitano, University of Toronto
Theopolitics and its apophatic force: anthropology and the labor of the negative
12:30 - 14:00
Monday February 1
Prof. Rudy Reimer, Simon Fraser University
How can archaeological media serve as a path to reconciling colonial interpretations?
12:30 - 14:30
Monday February 15
Prof. Cathy Crane and Dr. Miranda Dahlin, 平特五不中
Crossing Columbus听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听
12:30 - 14:30
Friday February 26
Prof. Ernst Karel and Veronika Kusumaryati, Harvard University
Expedition Content 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听
12:30 - 14:30
Monday March 15
Dr. Gregoire Hervouet-Zeiber, 平特五不中
'Finding Oneself in Civilian Life': Wars and their Domesticities in Putin鈥檚 Russia
12:30 - 14:00
Monday April 12
Professor Jarett Zigon, University of Virginia
How is it between us?
12:30 - 14:30
Monday April 19
Dr. Viviane Saglier, 平特五不中
Prefiguring Rights: Film Infrastructures as Facts on the Ground in Palestine
12:30 - 14:30
Monday April 26
Dr. Paul Codjia, 平特五不中
Governing with Visions: Ritual, Affect, and the Paradox of Political Leadership among the Wampis (peruvian amazon)
12:30 - 14:30
Past Events
Winter 2020
Winter 2020
Monday January 13
Samuel Veissi猫re, 平特五不中
Thinking Through Other Minds: A Variational Approach to Cognition and Culture
12:30, LEA 738
Friday January 17
Majd Al-Shihabi, Co-founder of MASRAD
My grandmother is my archive: Open source software and democracy in archival practice
12:30 鈥 2:00 Peterson Hall 116
Saturday January 18
平特五不中 Refugee Research Group Lecture Series, co-sponsored by Department of Anthropology and ISID and STAND Workshop.
Palestine Open Maps Mapathon with Majd Al-Shihabi
1:00 鈥 4:00 Leacock 738
Monday, January 20
Deborah Thomas R. Jean Brownlee Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, and Director, Center for Experimental Ethnography
Anthropology, Multi-modality, Decoloniality
12:30-2:30 Peterson 116
Thursday January 30
Behrouz Boochani (Independent Writer) in Conversation with Laura Madokoro
(Associate Professor, Carleton University)
And screening of Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time (2017)
4:00 鈥 6:00
Location TBC
平特五不中 Refugee Research Group Lecture Series, co-sponsored by Department of Anthropology and ISID
Thursday February 13
Rosalind Morris, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University
Workshop to be given in the afternoon, precise time and place to be announced
Friday February 14
Rosalind Morris Department of Anthropology, Columbia University
The Gamblers - A multi-media installation and discussion
The Black Box, EV Building, OS3-845/855, Concordia University. Co-sponsored with Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society andd Culture (CISSC), Concordia University, African Studies Working Group (Concordia University), and Film Studies Department (Concordia University)
Monday February 24
Andrew Bauer Stanford University
Archaeology and the Politics and Publics of Climate Change
12:30-2:30, Peterson Hall
A workshop with Andrew Bauer will be held after February 24th. Time and venue TBA.
Monday March 9
Martina Tazzioli, Lecturer in Politics and Technology, Goldsmiths, University of London.
The Making of Migration: The Biopolitics of Mobility at Europe's Borders
4:00 鈥 6:00
Location TBC.
平特五不中 Refugee Research Group Lecture Series, co-sponsored by Department of Anthropology and ISID
Monday, March 16
Caitlin Procter, Max Weber Fellow, European University Institute
Gaza and the March of Return protests
And screening of Gaza (2019), dir. Andrew McConnell and Gary Keane
4:00 鈥 6:00
Location TBC
平特五不中 Refugee Research Group Lecture Series, co-sponsored by Department of Anthropology and ISID
Monday April 1(CANCELLED)
Cristiana Giordano, Department of Anthropology, University of California -Davis
In dialogue with Lisa Stevenson (平特五不中, Anthropology), and screening of Era Un Lunes
4:00 鈥 6:00
Location TBC
平特五不中 Refugee Research Group Lecture Series, co-sponsored by Department of Anthropology and ISID
April 16 -17 (CANCELLED)
Workshop Anthropology of Knowledge and The Politics of Translation
Organized by Milad Odabaei, Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Anthropology, 平特五不中
Times and Location TBD
Fall 2019
Mon., September 23
Fadi Bardawil (Duke University) "Theory鈥檚 Resistances: Translating the 1960s Arab Left and the Current Revolutions (2011-)"听 12:30, LEA 738
Thurs., October 17
Lynn Meskell (Stanford University) "Engineering Internationalism: Colonialism, the Cold War and UNESCO's Victory in Nubia" 17:00, Le Salon, Mus茅e de Beaux Arts
Mon., October 28
Emanuele Coccia (脡cole des Hautes 脡tudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris ) "The city of the future: the museum of contemporary nature" 12:30 , LEA 738
Mon. November 4
Fr茅d茅ric Keck, (CNRS Research Director, Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale) 鈥淲orkshop and discussion of his forthcoming Book: Avian Reservoirs : Virus Hunters and Birdwatchers in Chinese Sentinel Posts.鈥 16:00, EDUC 434
Fri. November 8
James Ferguson, (Stanford University) "Rightful Shares and the Claims of Presence: Distributive Politics beyond Labor and Citizenship", 16:00- 18:00, Redpath Museum
Thurs. November 14 (CANCELLED)
Kristin Norget, Daniel Ceres and Erik Kuhonta Anthropology of Catholicism: A panel discussion
Fri. November 15 (CANCELLED)
Valentina Napolitano (University of Toronto) "Borders Incarnated: notes on an anthropology-theology (un)awkward relation" 13:00 - 15:00, LEA738
Fall 2018
Mon., September 17
Professor Junko Habu (University of California Berkeley) "Jomon Food Diversity, Climate Change and Long-term Sustainability" 12:30 - 14:00, Peterson Hall 116
Tues., October 9
Prof. Alireza Doostdar (University of Chicago) "Islam, Science, and the Gender of Reason" 16:00, Birks SCR
Thurs., October 18
Professor Miriam Ticktin (The New School) "Care Beyond Innocence" 12:30 - 14:00, Arts 160
Tues. November 6
Prof. Noah Salomon, (Carleton University) 鈥For Love of the Prophet: The Art of Islamic State-Making in Sudan鈥, Birks SCR
Wed. December 5
Prof. Liz Roberts, (University of Michigan) "Bioethnography as Method", 16:30- 18:00, Room 101, 3647 Peel Street.
Winter 2018
Fri., Jan 19
Mayanthi Fernando (UC Santa Cruz), Michael Allan (University of Oregon), Kabir Tambar (Stanford University); "Religion and Politics in a Secular Age" 12:30 - 2:00 pm, Peterson Hall 116
Fri., Feb 23
Heath Cabot (University of Pittsburgh); The European Refugee Crisis And Humanitarian Citizenship in Greece, 12:30 - 2:00 pm, Peterson Hall 116
Mon., Feb 26
Homa Hoodfar (Emerita Concordia University); Framing Academic Freedom And Critical Thinking As Trasnational Rights: Re-Envisioning The 1997 UNESCO Document, 12:30 - 2:00 pm, Peterson Hall 116
Wed., Mar 21
Mette Risor (Department of Community Medicine, General Practice Research Unit, UiT The Arctic University of Norway); Subjectivities At Stake: The Crafting of Agency And Personhood During Clinical Assessment of CFS, 12:30 - 2:30 pm, Peterson Hall 116
Mon., Mar 26
David Nolin (Postdoctoral scholar, Pennsylvania State University); Pulling Together: The Behavioral Ecology of Cooperative Hunting in Lamalera, Indonesia, 12:30 - 2:00 pm, Peterson Hall 116
Mon., Apr 9
Jean-Michel Landry (Banting Postdoctoral Fellow, 平特五不中); Ethics As A Vocation. SHI'I Clerical Training in Lebanon, 12:30 - 2:00 pm, Peterson Hall 116
Fall 2017
Mon., Sep. 25
Saida Hodzic (Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology and Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies听Cornell University); "Anthropology Debris: NGO Governance and the Ends of Cutting in Ghana;" 12:30 - 2:00 pm, Peterson Hall 116.
Mon., Oct. 16
Jon Altman (Associate Professor, Department of Law, Societies, and Justice and the Director, University of Washington's Middle East Center) "Contestations over the Environmental Governance of Indigenous Lands in Australia in the Age of 鈥楶unitive Neoliberalism"; 12:30-2pm Peterson Hall 116.
Tues. Oct. 24
Arzoo Osanloo听(Associate Professor, Department of Law, Societies, and Justice and听Director,听University of Washington's Middle East Center) "Embodied Forbearance: Mercy and Mediation in Iranian Criminal Law", 4:30-6pm TNC, Morrice Hall
Fri., Nov. 10
Maple Rasza听(Associate Professor and Director of Global Studies, Colby College)听"The Maribor Uprisings: Toward a Participatory Form of Visual Ethnography", 12:30-2 pm Education 613
Fri., Nov. 24
Abou听Farman听(Assistant Professor of Anthropology, The New School for Social Research) "Aneasthetic, Synaesthetic: Making Senses of the Afterlife in 3 Acts"; November 24, 12:30-2 pm, Peterson Hall 116
Winter 2017
Mon., Feb. 6
Jesse Casana (Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Dartmouth); "Artifacts of Settlement: Mapping of Archaeological Landscapes of the Northern Fertile Crescent;" 12:30-2:00pm, 3460 rue McTavish, Peterson Hall Room 116.
Tues., Feb. 7
Margaret Lock (Marjory Bronfman Professor Emerita, Department of Social Studies of Medicine/Department of Anthropology, 平特五不中), delivered the Huxley Memorial Lecture, "Mutable Environments and Permeable Human Bodies;鈥 5:00-7:00 p.m., Leacock Bldg. Rm. 232. .
Mon., Feb. 20
Michael Asch (Professor Emeritus, University of Alberta; Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Victoria); 鈥淥n Being Here to Stay: A Conversation on Resolving Political Relations between Indigenous Peoples and the Settler State;鈥 12:30-2:00pm, 3460 rue McTavish, Peterson Hall Room 116.
Mon., Apr. 3
Danielle Groleau听(Associate Professor, Division of Social & Transcultural Psychiatry, 平特五不中; Culture and Mental Health Research Unit, Lady Davis Medical Institute, Jewish General Hospital); 鈥淭he Psychological Experience of Female Genital Mutilation in Nigeria: Cultural Relativism or Human Rights? 鈥 a WHO Study;鈥 12:30-2:00pm, 3460 rue McTavish, Peterson Hall Room 116.
Fall 2016
鈥淟and Issues and the Global Indigenous Rights Movement among San Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa: A Comparison of Two Cases from Botswana and South Africa.鈥
Junko Maruyama, Associate Professor, Department of International and Cultural Studies, Tsuda College, Tokyo
Monday, October 31, 12:30-2pm, Peterson Hall, Room 116, 3460 rue McTavish
鈥淭raditional Stores and the Architecture of Cigarette Circulation in Indonesia.鈥
Marina Welker, Department of Anthropology, Cornell University
Friday, November 11, 12:30-2pm, Peterson Hall, Room 116, 3460 rue McTavish
鈥淧overty and the Quest for Life: Spiritual and Material Striving in Contemporary India.鈥
Bhrigupati Singh, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Brown University
Wednesday, November 16. 12:30-2pm, Peterson Hall, Room 116, 3460 rue McTavish
鈥淎bundance: Uneven Inclusion at an Andean Resource Frontier鈥
Eric Hirsch, Institute for the Study of International Development, 平特五不中
Monday, November 28, 12:30-2pm, Peterson Hall, Room 116, 3460 rue McTavish
Winter 2016
"The Opossum and the Coyote, Thirty Years Later: From farmers鈥 co-op to territorial defence in the northeastern Sierra de Puebla (Mexico)"
Pierre Beaucage, Professeur 茅m茅rite, D茅partement d'anthropologie, Universit茅 de Montr茅al
Friday, January 15, 12:30-2:00pm, Peterson Hall, Room 116, 3460 rue McTavish
"New directions in psychiatric anthropology: Cultural phenomenology, critical neuroscience, and global mental health"
Laurence Kirmayer, James 平特五不中 Professor and Director, Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, 平特五不中
Friday, January 29, 12:30-2:00pm, Peterson Hall, Room 116, 3460 rue McTavish
"Cosmopolitan Maya Women: Rethinking Interregional Interactions during the Terminal Classic to Postclassic periods (ca. 800-1521 CE)"
Christina Halperin, Professeure adjointe, D茅partement d'anthropologie, Universit茅 de Montr茅al
Friday, February 5, 12:30-2:00pm, Peterson Hall, Room 116, 3460 rue McTavish.
鈥淢emories of Childhood: Genre, Autobiography, and Voice鈥
Clara Han, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University
Friday, March 11, 12:30-2:00pm, Peterson Hall, Room 116, 3460 rue McTavish
鈥淲ildlife听Conservation, Land Use听Conflicts, and Indigenous Peoples鈥櫶齊ights in Zimbabwe鈥
Robert Hitchcock, Professor of Geography and adjunct faculty member, Department of Anthropology, Michigan State University
Wednesday, March 16, 12:30-2:00pm, Peterson Hall, Room 116, 3460 rue McTavish
鈥淩eflections on critical archaeological practices in the Near East: Notes from the field鈥
Arnulf Hausleiter, Visiting Research Scholar, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University
Monday, March 21, 12:30-2:00pm, Peterson Hall, Room 116, 3460 rue McTavish
鈥淭he Pandemic Perhaps: Notes on Faith and Reason鈥
Carlo Caduff, Department of Social Science, Health and Medicine, King鈥檚 College London
Wednesday, April 6, 12:30-2:00pm, Peterson Hall, Room 116, 3460 rue McTavish
鈥淚mages, Image Wars and the Study of Religion鈥
Birgit Meyer, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Utrecht
Thursday, April 7, 5:30pm, Rm 767, Hall Building, 1455 de Maisonneuve W., Concordia University
(co-sponsored by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture, the Global Emergent Media Lab, the Departments of Religion, Communication Studies, and Social and Cultural Anthropology, the Office of the Vice-President, Research and Graduate Studies, Concordia University; and the Department of Anthropology, 平特五不中)
Fall 2015
"One World Anthropology"
Tim Ingold, Chair in Social Anthropology, University of Aberdeen
Friday, October 9, 12:30-2:00pm, Peterson Hall, Room 116, 3460 rue McTavish
Public Lecture: 鈥淗usband-Killing in Chicago and the New Unwritten Law鈥
Thursday, November 12, 5-7 pm, Faculty of Law, New Chancellor Day Hall, Room 313
Seminar: 鈥淗ow Legal Speech Acts鈥
Friday, November 13, 1:00-2:30 pm, Faculty of Law, New Chancellor Day Hall, Room 202
Marianne Constable, Professor of Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley
(co-sponsored by Cr茅peau Centre for Private and Comparative Law, Katharine A. Pearson Chair in Civil Society and Public Policy, Dean of Arts Development Fund, Legal Theory Workshop, Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, Department of Anthropology, Critical Social Theory, Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas)
"Hope for China鈥檚 Environmental Crises Lies in Public Participation"
Libo, Consultant and Editor-in-Chief, Green Cover Book - Annual Review of China's Environment
Friday, December 4, 12:30-2:00pm, Peterson Hall, Room 116, 3460 rue McTavish
(co-sponsored by STandD [Centre for Society, Technology and Development], CICADA [Centre for Indigenous Conservation and Development Alternatives] and the Department of Anthropology)
Fall 2014
Political Therapeutics in Contemporary Italy
Cristiana Giordano, University of California Davis
Monday, September 22
(co-sponsored with the 平特五不中 Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry)
Wasting or Making Time and Space? 听Sweeping and Tattooing in the Mozambican Woodlands
Ingrid Nelson, University of Vermont
Monday, October 6, 4:00-5:00 pm, Burnside Hall 426
(co-sponsored with the 平特五不中 Department of Geography)
Mesolithic Hunter-Fisher-Gatherer Research in Ireland
Killian Driscoll, Banting Postdoctoral Fellow, Universit茅听de Montr茅al
Monday, October 20
Resilience and Hope amidst Conflict and Despair: Civil Society, NGOs, and Development in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Patience Kabamba, Visiting Fellow, University of Pennsylvania
Monday, October 27 (pending confirmation)
When Worldings Meet, and Matters of Concern Run out of Esteem
Mario Blaser, Memorial University
Monday, November 3
The Tyranny of the Commons, a Critical Perspective from the Peruvian Andes
Ingrid Hall, Universit茅听de Montr茅al听
Monday, December 1
Previous Years
Gaia, Anthropology and the Law
Bruno Latour, Professor Science Po
Friday, March 21, 4-6pm Chancellor Day Hall : Maxwell Cohen Moot
Court (room 100), 3644 rue Peel Montreal Quebec Canada
(co-sponsored with Law, Pearson Chair, Situating Science)
Time on Device: Slot Machine Design and the Turn Away from Risk in Gambling
Natasha Schull, Associate Professor, MIT, Program in Science, Technology, and Society
Thursday, April 10, 5:15, Arts W-215
(co-sponsored with Wolfe Chair and Media@平特五不中)
Is the Law Hopeful?
Annelise Riles, Jack G. Clarke Professor of Far East Legal Studies and Professor of
Anthropology at Cornell University Law School
Monday February 3, 4-6 pm, Chancellor Day Hall: Common Room, 3644
rue Peel
(co-sponsored with the Pearson Chair in Civil Society and Public Policy)
Los Exvotos Pictogr谩ficos Guadalupanos: Reglas Tradicionales y Transformaciones Medi谩ticas
Margarita Zires, Universidad Aut贸noma de M茅xico, Xochimilco, Mexico
(co-sponsored with the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures
and the Latin American and Carribbean Studies Interdisciplinary Program)
Metrics of the Global Sovereign: Numbers and Stories in Global Health
Vincanne Adams, Professor, University of California, San Francisco,
Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine
(co-sponsored with SSOM)
Workshop: Fieldwork After Ethnos
George Marcus, Professor, Department of Anthropology UC Irvine;
Tobias Rees, Assistant Professor SSOM, 平特五不中;
Katherine Lemons, Assistant Professor, Anthropology 平特五不中 (discussant)
(co sponsored with SSOM)
Prototyping & Contemporary Anthropological
Experiments with Ethnographic Method
George Marcus, Professor, Department of Anthropology, UC Irvine
(co-sponsored with SSOM, Concordia Department of Sociology and Anthropology,
CEREV Centre for Ethnographic Research and Exhibition in the Aftermath of Violence)
Repatriation and the Second Life of Heritage: Return of the Masks in Kodiak, Alaska
James Clifford, Emeritus Professor in the History of Consciousness
Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz
(co-sponsored with Department of Communication Studies, Concordia University)鈥
The Great Chinese Grasslands and the Fate of Their Pastoral Peoples.
Philip Salzman, Professor, Department of Anthropology, 平特五不中
听
The Fog of Humanitarian War: the Indistinguishability of Warriors, Enemies, Victims, and Saviors
Mariella Pandolfi, Professor, Department of Anthropology, Universit茅 de Montr茅al
听
Ethnographic Film Screenings and Q & A with Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab Filmmakers
Lucien Taylor, Professor Anthropology Harvard University;
J.P Sniadecki, Assistant Professor Department of Performing and Media Arts, Cornell University;
Stephanie Spray, Harvard University
(co-sponsored with RIDM Montreal International Documentary Festival)
Films:
Songhua
J. P. Sniadecki, 2007
Yumen
Xu Ruotao, J.P. Sniadecki and Huang Xiang, 2013
People's Park
Libbie D. Cohn and J.P. Sniadecki, 2012
An Audio Performance
Ernst Karel, 脡milie Payeur
Manakamana
Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez, 2013
Foreign Parts
V茅r茅na Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki, 2010
Roundtable with Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab Filmmakers
Lucien Taylor, Professor of Visual Arts and Anthropology Harvard University;
J.P Sniadecki, Assistant Professor Department of Performing and Media Arts, Cornell University;
Stephanie Spray, Harvard University;
Lisa Stevenson; Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, 平特五不中 (moderator)
(co-sponsored with RIDM Montreal International Documentary Festival)
Films:
As Long As There's Breath
Stephanie Spray, 2009
Sweetgrass
Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash, 2009
Leviathan
Lucien Castaing-Taylor and V茅r猫na Paravel, 2013
Fieldwork in Photography
Dr. Robert Desjarlais, Professor of Anthropology, Sarah Lawrence College,听
Berkeley CA
Capitalism after Progress: Salvage Accumulation on Blasted Landscapes
Dr. Anna Tsing, Professor of Anthropology, University of California Santa Cruz
(co-sponsored with the Department of Anthropology, Concordia University)
What would the world look like if we examined it without expectations of progress?听 This talk offers a taste from my 鈥淟iving in Ruins鈥 project, in which a charismatic wild mushroom helps me view the world through disturbed forests and displaced rural people鈥攖hat is, through humans and nonhumans negotiating progress鈥檚 ruins.听 Capitalism certainly looks different from this perspective.听 Suddenly it is clear that capitalism can never be self-contained; accumulation is always salvaged for capitalism from non-capitalist social landscapes, including the ruined industrial forests of my mushroom study.听 How could we have missed this?听 Without the blinders of progress, the riches of global heterogeneity come into view, both terrible and sweet.
Workshop on Excerpts from Anna Tsing's "Living in Ruins" Manuscript*
Dr. Anna Tsing, Professor of Anthropology, University of California Santa Cruz
(co-sponsored with the Department of Anthropology, Concordia University)
Title TBA
Dr. Betsey Brada, Ph.D Anthropology, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Center for Health and Well-Being, Princeton University
(co-sponsored with SSOM)
When Law and Social Science Diverge: Causation in the International Law of Incitement to Commit Genocide
Dr. Richard Wilson, Gladstein Professor of Human Rights, Professor of Anthropology and Law, Human Rights Institute, University of Connecticut
Debt, Credit and the 鈥淓nd鈥 of Finance in Post-Fukushima Japan
Dr. Hiro Miyazaki, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Cornell University
(co-sponsored with SSOM and the Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy)
The ongoing global financial crisis suggests that the era in which finance served as a site of vigorous intellectual and socio-economic experiment may have come to an end. This sense of the end of finance has particularly intensified in Tokyo. Theories, techniques and conceptual tools of finance designed to manage and profit from risk have served as means of socio-economic reform in Japan since the burst of the economic bubble in the early 1990s. Financial market professionals have been a major force behind the promotion of a new culture of risk and responsibility. Following the global financial crisis of 2007-2008, however, Tokyo is quickly losing its status as a global financial center, and Tokyo鈥檚 financial market professionals now face new challenges ranging from frequent lay-offs and downsizing to a sheer lack of intellectual excitement.
In this context, Japan鈥檚 triple disasters on March 11, 2011, and the profound uncertainty of the world that the disasters have revealed, have presented a new layer of challenges to Tokyo鈥檚 financial market professionals. In particular, the accident at Fukushima Dai鈥檌chi Nuclear Power Plant created a financial crisis of its own. Its operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), a major supplier of electricity in the greater Tokyo area, was what many perceived as one of the most financially stable companies and was the biggest issuer of corporate bonds in Japan prior to the accident. After the disasters, major Japanese financial institutions, such as mega banks and insurance companies, were suddenly exposed to a wide range of risks associated with TEPCO鈥檚 large corporate debt as well as lawsuits and massive compensation claims against the utility company. These risks quickly became major sources of anxiety and profit opportunity for Tokyo鈥檚 financial market professionals.
In this paper, drawing on my ethnographic field research in Tokyo in 2011 and 2012, I examine two contrasting market responses to the TEPCO crisis orchestrated by Tokyo鈥檚 financial market professionals in the months following the disasters, as manifestations of these professionals鈥 conscious efforts to re-deploy theories and techniques of finance in a newly found sphere of profound uncertainty. I offer these ethnographic examples as illustrations not only of problems associated with the specificity and peculiarity of Japan鈥檚 debt and credit markets but also of a more general question of how theoretical, technical and professional commitments are made anew.
Hirokazu Miyazaki is Director of the East Asia Program and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University. He has studied indigenous Fijian gift giving and Japanese derivatives trading. He is the author of The Method of Hope: Anthropology, Philosophy, and Fijian Knowledge (Stanford University Press, 2004) and Arbitraging Japan: Dreams of Capitalism at the End of Finance (University of California Press, 2013).