Less is more/Less and more
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Beneath a modernist roof: A critical autoethnography
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Writing family: Diaspora and self-representation in autoethnography
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
The Thirty Boys: The filmmaker’s reflections
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
People who live in glass houses: Author as subject, Subject as author
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Central Asian sociabilities
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Dancing, singing, and ethnography as political acts
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Community-building and resilience in Uyghur meshrep in Kazakhstan
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Them-you-us
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Flows
The socialist systems relied on particular flows of information, goods, and connections that not only enabled them to function, at least for a few decades, but also became intrinsic to the ways people living in these societies envisioned and experience…
“I feel like we skipped a social class”: The role of social class in the hijra of Dutch and Flemish Muslim women to Morocco
This article examines the role of social class in the hijra (Islamic migration) of Dutch and Flemish Muslim women (born and converted) to Morocco. Through an ethnography of their home-making practices, I argue that analyzing social class is crucial to …
The staying power of Katherine Verdery’s insights on gender ideologies in Eastern Europe
The article examines the impact of Katherine Verdery’s work on gender under socialism as exemplified by her article “From parent-state to family patriarchs: Gender and nation in contemporary Eastern Europe.”
The vanishing villager: Three decades of political, economic and ethnic change in Bulgaria
One measure of a scholar’s work is how long it continues to be relevant and useful. This article shows how The vanishing hectare and Transylvanian villagers, books written by Katherine Verdery twenty and forty years ago, respectively, help us make sens…
Katherine Verdery: Brushing aside the ideological curtain
This contribution highlights one of Katherine Verdery’s strengths as an anthropologist: her ability to recognize and penetrate foundational ideological formations to analyze the sociocultural dynamics at play. The ideological formations she has deciphe…
Law as ritual: Evoking an ideal order
In the modern state most laws enshrine practical social norms in a way that everyone can be aware of. Laws take a legalistic form, as generalizing rules and abstract categories. But turning to historical and ethnographic examples, we find legalistic ru…
Time and space in the work of Katherine Verdery
Katherine Verdery is often thought of as a theorist of time and temporality. In “The ‘etatization’ of time in Ceauşescu’s Romania,” Verdery looked at how the socialist regime placed time itself in shortage. Yet, it is Verdery’s often critical geography…
The affective economy of democracy: Women’s adverse incorporation in party politics in Dehradun, North India
Party politics is an affective economy in which the generation and accumulation of positive sentiments achieve electoral success. In Dehradun, North India, party workers undertake activities to build and maintain affective relationships with voters, an…
Erotic apprehension in Syrian and German encounters
The presence of new arrivals from the global South has provoked shifts in Stimmungen (collective moods) and a political backlash against social incorporation in Germany. This long-term study explores erotic apprehensions between Syrian refugees and Ger…
Introduction
This article introduces thirteen reflections on the scholarly contributions of anthropologist Katherine Verdery, Julien J. Studley Faculty Scholar and Distinguished Professor Emerita at the City University of New York Graduate Center’s Department of An…
Katherine Verdery at Hopkins 1977–1997
The article describes Katherine Verdery’s intellectual contributions and interactions with her colleagues at the Department of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University from 1977–1997.
An appreciation of Katherine Verdery’s My life as a spy: Investigations in a secret police file
As a foreign anthropologist in Romania in the 1970s and ’80s, Katherine Verdery was under observation by the secret police. Later, having obtained her files, she put the secret police under her own ethnographic observation. Her analyses are examined in…
Triangulation: An imperial power device
Drawing on Katherine Verdery’s Transylvanian villagers and fieldwork in Latvia, this article discusses triangulation as an imperial power device whereby one actor makes an alliance with another to influence a third. The social and political field withi…
Urban anthropology or anthropology in the city Does Lefebvre hold the key to escape this cul-de-sac?
Urban anthropology is a discipline that emerged only with great difficulty. Its origin in the Chicago school of sociology made the discipline dependent upon urban sociology. The ethnographic focus of the Chicago school was short-lived, overtaken by a s…
Desiring home: A long-term ethnography of a mosque in Lisbon
The recent literature on home has focused on the importance of imagination and performativity in the making of places. In this article, I bring together the imagined and the material dimensions of home-making, to show how people (re)attach themselves t…
On critical African postsocialisms
Relative to Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America, scant attention has been paid to the fate of formerly socialist states in Africa. One reason is that postcolonialism has served as the default analytic frame for everything Africa-related. Another re…