ARJUN APPADURAI

Arjun Appadurai serves as Senior Advisor for Global Initiatives at The New School in New York City, where he also holds a Distinguished Professorship as the John Dewey Professor in the Social Sciences. Until recently, Arjun Appadurai was the Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at The New School. He was formerly William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of International Studies, Professor of Anthropology, and Director of the Center for Cities and Globalization at Yale University. Appadurai is the founder and now the President of PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research), a non-profit organization based in and oriented to the city of Mumbai (India).

Professor Appadurai was born and educated in Bombay. He graduated from St. Xavier's High School and earned his Intermediate Arts degree from Elphinstone College before coming to the United States. He earned his B.A. from Brandeis University in 1970, and his M.A. (1973) and Ph.D. (1976) from the University of Chicago.



During his academic career, he has held professorial chairs at Yale University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Pennsylvania, and has held visiting appointments at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris), the University of Michigan, the University of Iowa, Columbia University and New York University. He serves on several scholarly and advisory bodies in the United States, Latin America, Europe and India. He has authored numerous books and scholarly articles including Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger (2006, Duke University Press) and Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, (1996, University of Minnesota Press; 1997, Oxford University Press, Delhi). His previous scholarly publications have covered such topics as religion, cuisine, agriculture and mass culture in India.

He is one of the founding editors, along with Carol A. Breckenridge, of the journal Public Culture and was the founding Director of the Chicago Humanities Institute at the University of Chicago (1992-1998), during which time he held the Richard J. and Barbara E. Franke Professorship. He is one of the founders of the Interdisciplinary Network on Globalization, a consortium of institutions in various parts of the world devoted to the study of global politics and culture.

Arjun Appadurai has held numerous fellowships and scholarships and has received several scholarly honors, including residential fellowships at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto (California) and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and an Individual Research Fellowship from the Open Society Institute (New York). He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served or has served on numerous national and international advisory bodies, including the advisory council of the Smithsonian Institute, and the governing boards of: the Center for Arts and Culture (Washington, DC), the Institute for Cultural Pluralism (Rio de Janeiro), the Research Center for Religion and Society (Amsterdam), Amsterdam School for Social Science Research, and the Social Science Research Council (New York).

He has served as a consultant or advisor to a wide range of public and private organizations, including many major foundations (Ford, MacArthur, and Rockefeller); UNESCO; UNDP; WIDER (World Institute for Development Economics Research); the World Bank; the National Endowment for the Humanities; and the National Science Foundation. His current research has three foci: ethnic violence in the context of globalization, with a special focus on ethnic relations in Mumbai in the late 1980's and 1990's; a longer term collaborative project on the cultural dimensions of social crisis in Mumbai, focusing on housing, poverty, media and violence; a comparative ethnographic project on grass-roots globalization, intended to illuminate emergent transnational organizational forms and new practices of sovereignty.

RESEARCH

Arjun Appadurai is a socio-cultural anthropologist with specializations in globalization, public culture, and urban studies. His major accomplishment has been the construction of anthropological frameworks for the study of global media, consumption, and migration. His current work focuses on poverty, violence, and social inclusion in mega-cities with a special focus on Mumbai (India).

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
 
Library Research, Indian Office Library and British Museum, London, 1974, 1977.
 
Ethnographic and archival research in Madras, India, Summer 1977 and 1973-74.
 
Fieldwork in rural Maharashtra State, India, 1981-82.
 
Fieldwork in Madras, Bombay and Delhi, Winter 1986 and Winter 1988 (short-term).
 
Fieldwork in Bombay, Winter 1995-96, Fall 1997, Spring 1998.
 
Fieldwork in India, South Africa, Philippines, 1999 - present
 
BOOKS AND EDITED COLLECTIONS

2006 Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger Duke University Press.

2002 Globalization (edited volume). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

2001 (Translation of Modernity At Large) La Modernided Desbordada. Uruguay and Argentina: Ediciones Trilces and Fondo de Cultura Economica de Argentina.

2001 (Translation of Modernity At Large) Apres le Colonialisme: Les Consequences Culturelles de la globalisation. Paris: Payot.

2001 (Translation of Modernity At Large) Modernità in polvere. Rome: Meltemi Editore.

1996 Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

1991 Co-editor (with M. Mills and F. Korom, Eds.), Gender, Genre and Power in South Asian Expressive Traditions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

1988 Guest Editor, Special Issue of Cultural Anthropology on "Place and Voice in Anthropological Theory" (Vol. 3, No. 1).

1987 Guest Editor (with Carol A. Breckenridge), Special Annual Issue of The India Magazine (New Delhi) on "Public Culture".

1986 The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (edited volume). New York: Cambridge University Press.

1983 (Reprint). Worship and Conflict Under Colonial Rule: A South Indian Case. New Delhi: Orient Longman.

1981 Worship and Conflict Under Colonial Rule: A South Indian Case. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

BOOKS AND EDITED COLLECTIONS (IN PREPARATION)

1.The Capacity to Aspire: Hope and Housing in a Transnational Movement

2.India After Empire: Collected Essays.

3.East of Anthropology: Collected Essays.

ARTICLES

1974
"Right and Left Hand Castes in South India," Indian Economic and Social History Review 11 (2-3): 216-259.

1976
(with Carol A. Breckenridge) "The South Indian Temple: Authority, Honor and Redistribution," Contributions to Indian Sociology 10 (2): 187-211.

1977
"Kings, Sects and Temples in South India, 1350-1700 A.D.," Economic and Social History Review 14 (1): 47-73.

1978
"Understanding Ghandi," Childhood and Selfhood: Essays on Tradition, Religion and Modernity in the Psychology of Erik H. Erikson, P. Homans (Ed.). Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press: 113-43.

1980
"Comment on Female Lingam: Interchangeable Symbols and Paradoxical Associations of Hindu Gods and Goddesses by G. Eichinger Ferro-Luzzi," Current Anthropology 21 (1, February): 54.

1981
(Review) "Gopal Krishna, ed., Contributions to South Asian Studies 1, Delhi, Oxford University Press," American Ethnologist 8 (1, February): 211-212.

1981
"Gastro-Politics in Hindu South Asia," American Ethnologist 8 (3, August): 494-511.

1981
"The Past as a Scarce Resource," Man (N.S.) 16 (2, June): 201-219.

1981
"Rituals and Cultural Change," Reviews in Anthropology 8 (2, Spring): 121-138.

1983
"The Puzzling Status of Brahman Temple Priests in Hindu India," South Asian Anthropologist 4 (1, March): 43-52.

1984
"Wells in Western India: Irrigation and Cooperation in an Agricultural Society," Expedition 26 (3): 3-14.

1984
(with Gregory Possehl) "Cow," Man and Animals: Living, Working and Changing Together. Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania: 47-56.

1984
"How Moral is South Asia's Economy? -- A Review Essay," Journal of Asian Studies 43 (3, May): 481-497.

1985
(Review) "The Cult of the Goddess Pattini, by G. Obeyesekere," Journal of Asian Studies 44 (3, May): 647-649.

1985
(Review) "Understanding Green Revolutions: Agrarian Change and Development Planning in South Asia, Tim P. Bayliss-Smith and Sudhir Wanmali, eds.," Third World Quarterly (London).

1985
"Gratitude as a Social Mode in South India," Ethos 13 (3, Fall): 236-245.

1986
"Commodities and the Politics of Value," Introductory Essay, The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. A. Appadurai (Ed.).Cambridge University Press, 3-63.

1986
"Center and Periphery in Anthropological Theory," Comparative Studies in Society and History 28 (2): 356-361.

1986
(with Wilhelm Halbfass) "History of the Study of Indian Religions," Encyclopaedia of Religion. Mircea Eliade, Editor. Macmillan, New York.

1986
"Is Homo Hierarchicus—A Review Essay," American Ethnologist 13 (4): 745-761.

1987
"Hinduism," Encyclopaedia of Asian History. New York: The Asia Society and Scribner and Sons, Volume 2: 56-59.

1987
"The Indian Cow," Encyclopaedia of Asian History. New York: The Asia Society and Scribner and Sons, Volume 1: 347.

1987
"Street Culture," The India Magazine 8 (1, December): 2-23.

1988
"How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India," Comparative Studies in Society and History 30 (1, January): 3-24.

1988
"Place and Voice in Anthropological Theory," Cultural Anthropology 3 (1, February): 16-20.

1988
"Putting Hierarchy in its Place," Cultural Anthropology 3 (1, February): 37-50.

1988
"Comment on Francis Zimmerman, The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats," Social Science and Medicine 27 (3): 206-207.

1988
"Imagined Worlds: The Decolonization of Cricket," The Olympics and Cultural Exchange. S.P. Kang, J. McAloon and R. da Matta (Eds.). Seoul: Hanyang University, Institute for Ethnographic Studies, 163-190.

1988
(With Carol Breckenridge) "Why Public Culture?" Public Culture 1 (1, Fall): 5-9.

1989
"Transformations in the Culture of Agriculture," Contemporary Indian Tradition. Carla Borden (Ed.). The Smithsonian Institution Press: Washington and London, 173-186.

1989
"Small-Scale Techniques and Large-Scale Objectives," Conversations Between Economists and Anthropologists. P. Bardhan (Ed.). New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 250-282.

1990
"Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy," Public Culture (2) 2: 1-24 (Long Version).

1990
"Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy," Theory, Culture and Society 7 (2 and 3, July): 295-310 (Short Version).

1990
"Topographies of the Self: Praise and Emotion in Hindu India," Affecting Discourse: Anthropological Essays on Emotions and Social Life. C. Lutz and L. Abu-Lughod (Eds.). New York and London: Cambridge University Press: 92-112.

1990
"Technology and the Reproduction of Values in Western India," Dominating Knowledge: Development, Culture and Resistance. S.A. Marglin and F.A. Marglin (Eds.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

1990
(with Carol A. Breckenridge) "Public Culture in Late 20th-Century India," Items 44 (4), December 1990: 77-80.

1991
"Dietary Improvisation in an Agricultural Economy," Diet and Domestic Life in Society. Sharman et. al. (Eds.). Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 207-232.

1991
(With Carol A. Breckenridge) "Marriage, Migration and Money: Mira Nair's Cinema of Displacement," Visual Anthropology 4 (1, Spring): 95-102.

1991
"Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a Transnational Anthropology," Interventions: Anthropologies of the Present. R.G. Fox (Ed.). Santa Fe: School of American Research, 191-210.

1991
(With Carol 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.

1991
(With F. J. Korom and M. A. Mills) "Introduction," Gender, Genre, and South Asian Expressive Traditions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

1991
"Afterword," Gender, Genre, and South Asian Expressive Traditions. A. Appadurai, F. J. Korom and M. A. Mills (Eds.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

1992
(Reprint). "Putting Hierarchy in its Place," Rereading Cultural Anthropology. G. E. Marcus (Ed.). Durham and London: Duke University Press.

1992
"Father Britto," Polygraph 5: 248-250.

1993
"Number in the Colonial Imagination," Orientalism and the Post-Colonial Predicament. C.A. Breckenridge and P. van der Veer (eds.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

1993
"Patriotism and Its Futures," Public Culture (3) 5: 411-429, Spring 1993.

1993
"The Heart of Whiteness," Callaloo 16: 797-807.

1993
(Reprint) "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy," The Phantom Public Sphere. Bruce Robbins (Ed.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 269-295.

1993
"Consumption, Duration and History," Stanford Literary Review 10 (1-2, Spring-Fall): 11-23.

1993
(Reprint) "Consumption, Duration and History," Streams of Cultural Capital. D. Palumbo-Liu and H. U. Gumbrecht (eds.). Stanford: Stanford University Press.

1993
"The Geography of Canonicity," What is Fundamental? The Committee on Social Thought. Chicago: The University of Chicago: 3-12.

1994
(Translation). "Indiase Kookkunst," In Mijn Vaders Huis II. A. Ramdas (Ed.). Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Jan Mets.

1994
"Contesting the Popular in Africa," Passages: A Chronicle of the Humanities 8: 1.

1995
"The Production of Locality," Counterwork. R. Fardon (Ed.). London: Routledge.

1995
"Playing with Modernity: The Decolonization of Indian Cricket," Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in a South Asian World. C.A. Breckenridge (Ed.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

1995
(With Carol 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.

1995
(Translation). "Le patriotisme et son avenir," Futur Antérieur 27(1): 35-54.

1996
"Sovereignty Without Territoriality: Notes for a Postnational Geography," The Geography of Identity. P. Yaeger (Ed.). Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 40-58.

1996
"Diversity and Disciplinarity as Cultural Artifacts," Disciplinarity and Dissent in Cultural Studies. C. Nelson and D. Gaonkar (Eds.). New York: Routledge.

1996
(with James Holston) "Cities and Citizenship," Public Culture 8: 187-204.

1996
"Off-White," A.N.Y. (Architecture New York), Winter.

1996
(Translation). "Fogyasztás, id_tartam, történelem," Replika, 21/22 május 1996: 81-98.

1997
"The Colonial Backdrop," Afterimage, March/April, v. 24:5, 4-7.

1997
"Fieldwork in the Era of Globalization," Anthropology and Humanism, 22:1.

1997
"The Research Ethic and the Spirit of Internationalism," Items, Social Science Research Council, December, 51:4 (Part I), 55-60.

1997
(Translation). "Notas para uma geografia pós-nacional," Novos Estudos. 49 (November).

1997
(Translation - Chinese). "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy," Identity and Public Culture. S. C. K. Chan (Ed.). Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.

1998
"Dead Certainty: Ethnic Violence in the Era of Globalization," Public Culture, Winter, 10:2.

1998
"Full Attachment," Public Culture, Winter, 10:2.

1998
(Translation). "Globale ethische Räume," Perspektiven der Weltgesellschaft. U. Beck (Ed.). Germany: Suhrkamp.

1998
"How to Live Together: An Interview with Arjun Appadurai," Interview by W. Burszta, F. Kujawinski, and T. Tabako. 2B (To Be): A Journal of Ideas 13: 106-112.

1999
"Globalization and the Research Imagination," International Social Science Journal, 160 (June 1999).

1999
(Reprint, with James Holston) "Cities and Citizenship," Cities and Citizenship. J. Holston (Ed.). Durham and London: Duke University Press.

1999
"Public Culture," Oxford India Companion to Sociology and Social Anthropology. Veena Das (Ed.). New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

1999
"Gift Trapped," University of Chicago Magazine December: 35-37.

1999
"The Bomb, Bombay, Mumbai," Fellow Observer (Open Society Institute, New York) II: I: 10-11.

2000
"The Grounds of the Nation-State: Identity, Violence and Territory," Nationalism and Internationalism in the Post-Cold War Era. K. Goldmann, U. Hannerz, and C. Westin (Eds.). London: Routledge.

2000
"Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination," in Public Culture, Special Issue on Globalization, (Ed.: Arjun Appadurai). 12 (1):1-19

2000
"Spectral Housing and Urban Cleansing: Notes on Millennial Mumbai," in Public Culture, Special Issue on Cosmopolitanism, (Eds.: C. Breckenridge, H. Bhabha, D. Chakrabarty, S. Pollock). 12 (3): 627-651

2000
"Savoir, circulation et biographie collective," L'Homme. 156: 29-38

2000
"Globalization and Area Studies: The Future of a False Opposition." Wertheim Lecture 2000. Amsterdam: Centre for Asian Studies

2000
(with Katerina Stenou) "Sustainable Development and the Future of Belonging," in World Culture Report 2000: 111-123 Paris: UNESCO.

2001
"The Globalization of Archaeology and Heritage: A Discussion with Arjun Appadurai," in Journal of Social Archaeology 1 (1):35-49.

2002
"Deep Democracy: Urban Governmentality and the Horizion of Politics," Public Culture 14 (1), Winter 2002: 21-47.

2002
"Deep Democracy: Urban Governmentality and the Horizion of Politics," Environment and Urbanization 13 (2), October 2001: 23-43. (Same as 2002a).

2002
"Broken Promises," Foreign Policy, September/October: 42-44.

2002
"Cultural Diversity: A Conceptual Platform," UNESCO Declaration on Cultural Diversity, Cultural Diversity Series #1. Paris: UNESCO.

2002
"The Right to Participate in the Work of the Imagination" (Interview by Arjen Mulder), TransUrbanism: 33-46. Rotterdam: V2_Publishing/NAI Publishers.

2003
"Archive and Aspiration," in Information is Alive, Joke Brouwer and Arjen Mulder (Editors): 14-25. Rotterdam: V2_Publishing/NAI Publishers.

2004
"The Capacity to Aspire," in Cultural and Public Action, (Eds: V. Rao, M. Walton). Stanford University Press.

2004

"Minorities and the Production of Daily Peace." in Feeling Are Always Local, V2_Publishing/NA I Publishers, Rotterdam.

2005

"Materiality in the Future of Anthropology," in Commodification: Things, Agency and Identities. (The Social Life of Things Revisited) eds. Wim van Binsbergen and Peter Geschiere. LIT Verlag.

2005

"The Thing Itself" ARTIndia. Volume IX. Issue IV.

2006

"Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy." in Media and Cultural Studies: Keywords eds. Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas M. Kellner. Blackwell Publishing.

2006

"The Thing Itself." Public Culture. 18(1), Winter.

2006

"The Right to Research." Globalization, Societies, and Education. Volume 4 (2) July.

Forthcoming

"Afterword" with Carol A. Breckenridge. Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis. eds. Achille Mbembe and Sarah Nuttal. Duke University Press.