Arjun Appadurai
A native of Bombay, India, Arjun Appadurai moved to the United States to attend college at Brandeis University. He went on to receive his master’s degree (1973) and doctorate (1976) from the University of Chicago. While the majority of his fieldwork has been focused on urban India, in 1999 he began work in South Africa and the Philippines. Appadurai’s research has been focused on topics such as globalization and cultural pluralism, ethnic violence, space and housing, consumption, and grassroots political activism. During his distinguished career, he has contributed to applied anthropology as well as anthropological theory.
Appadurai is currently the Senior Advisor for Global Initiatives and John Dewey Distinguished Professor in the Social Sciences at the New School in New York City. He has previously served in the administration of the New School as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. Appadurai has also held appointments at the University of Chicago, where he held the Richard J. and Barbara E. Franke professorship and was the Samuel N. Harper Distinguished Service Professor; the University of Pennsylvania, where he also served as a consulting curator to the Asian section of the University Museum; and Yale University, where he was the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of International Studies, a professor of anthropology, political science, and sociology, and the director of the university’s Center for Cities and Globalization. In addition, he has been a visiting instructor at several universities in the United States and abroad.
Outside of teaching, Appadurai has been involved in a number of academic and non-profit projects. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and recipient of many prestigious fellowships, he has served as an advisor to national and international agencies including the Smithsonian Institution, the United Nations, the World Bank, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Science Foundation. Appadurai is also the founder and president of the non-profit group Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research located in Mubai, India. He is also one of the founders of the Interdisciplinary Network on Globalization and Public Culture, an interdisciplinary journal focused on transnationalism.
In 1986, Appadurai’s edited volume The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective examined the role of material culture in human social life. This work is one of the first compilations representing an interdisciplinary approach to the significance of the material world in human consciousness. Appadurai’s introductory article, “Commodities and the Politics of Value,” outlines a socialized view of commodities. He argues that commodities may be said to have social lives because they embody value, as created by a society. Moreover, Appadurai stresses that “commodity” is only one possible phase in the social life of an object; as it travels within different regimes of value, it may exit and reenter the commodity sphere. Commodities therefore communicate complex, context-dependent messages operating within a culturally constructed framework. Although Appadurai has focused on a broad range of topics during his career, this work secures him a place as one of the more important contributors to the theory of the social life of things.
Sources:
<http://www.newschool.edu/gf/anthro/faculty/appadurai/index.htm>
<http://www.appadurai.com/>
Appadurai, A. (1986) "Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value." In The Social Life of Things, A.
Appaduri (ed.). Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, pp.3-63.
Appadurai is currently the Senior Advisor for Global Initiatives and John Dewey Distinguished Professor in the Social Sciences at the New School in New York City. He has previously served in the administration of the New School as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. Appadurai has also held appointments at the University of Chicago, where he held the Richard J. and Barbara E. Franke professorship and was the Samuel N. Harper Distinguished Service Professor; the University of Pennsylvania, where he also served as a consulting curator to the Asian section of the University Museum; and Yale University, where he was the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of International Studies, a professor of anthropology, political science, and sociology, and the director of the university’s Center for Cities and Globalization. In addition, he has been a visiting instructor at several universities in the United States and abroad.
Outside of teaching, Appadurai has been involved in a number of academic and non-profit projects. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and recipient of many prestigious fellowships, he has served as an advisor to national and international agencies including the Smithsonian Institution, the United Nations, the World Bank, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Science Foundation. Appadurai is also the founder and president of the non-profit group Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research located in Mubai, India. He is also one of the founders of the Interdisciplinary Network on Globalization and Public Culture, an interdisciplinary journal focused on transnationalism.
In 1986, Appadurai’s edited volume The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective examined the role of material culture in human social life. This work is one of the first compilations representing an interdisciplinary approach to the significance of the material world in human consciousness. Appadurai’s introductory article, “Commodities and the Politics of Value,” outlines a socialized view of commodities. He argues that commodities may be said to have social lives because they embody value, as created by a society. Moreover, Appadurai stresses that “commodity” is only one possible phase in the social life of an object; as it travels within different regimes of value, it may exit and reenter the commodity sphere. Commodities therefore communicate complex, context-dependent messages operating within a culturally constructed framework. Although Appadurai has focused on a broad range of topics during his career, this work secures him a place as one of the more important contributors to the theory of the social life of things.
Sources:
<http://www.newschool.edu/gf/anthro/faculty/appadurai/index.htm>
<http://www.appadurai.com/>
Appadurai, A. (1986) "Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value." In The Social Life of Things, A.
Appaduri (ed.). Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, pp.3-63.
Publications
Books:
2006 Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
1996 Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
1981 Worship and Conflict under Colonial Rule: A South Indian Case. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Selected Articles:
2005 “Materiality in the Future of Anthropology,” in Commodification: Things, Agency and Identities.W. van Binsbergen and P. Geschiere (eds.). Berlin: LIT.
2005 "The Thing Itself" ARTIndia. Volume IX. Issue IV.
1999 "Gift Trapped," University of Chicago Magazine December: 35-37.
1995 (With C. A. Breckenridge) "Public Modernity in India." Introductory Essay, Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in a South Asian World. C.A. Breckenridge (ed.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
1993 "Consumption, Duration and History," Streams of Cultural Capital. D. Palumbo-Liu and H. U. Gumbrecht (eds.). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
1991 (With C. A. Breckenridge) "Museums are Good to Think: Heritage on View in India," Museums and Their Communities: The Politics of Public Culture. I. Karp, S. Levine and T. Ybarra-Frausto (Eds.). Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 34-55.
1990 “Technology and the Reproduction of Values in Western India,” in Dominating Knowledge: Development, Culture and Resistance. S. A. Marglin and F. A. Marglin (eds.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Edited Volumes:
2002 Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press
1991 (M. Mills and F. Korom, co-editors) Gender, Genre, and Power in South Asian Expressive Traditions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press
1986 The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press .
